Page 2 of A Language of Dragons

NOW THAT I REMEMBER THE WORD in one dragon language, I recall it in others, too. The translations roll off my tongue as I run, head spinning, towards the dining room.

Faitour. Slangrieger. Izmamnees.

Two Guardians of Peace stand in the foyer, shards of glass from the smashed front door scattered at their feet. The light of the lamps reflects off their visors, which hide their eyes. I skid to a halt as Dad bursts from the dining room.

‘How dare you enter my house—’

More of them come marching through the front door, the glass crunching beneath their heavy boots. They seize Dad by the arms.

‘Let go of him!’

I move towards my father, but Uncle Thomas gets there faster. He throws himself between Dad and the Guardians and I hear a sickening crunch as his foot meets someone’s knee. He twists one of the Guardians in his grip and slams him to the ground.

‘Vivien!’

Mama calls from the doorway. I reach her side at the same time as another Guardian, this one pointing a gun. Ursa is screaming, struggling in Marquis’s grip as she tries to run towards Dad. Marquis flings his free arm in front of Mama and me and stares into the Guardian’s helmet.

‘Don’t hurt them!’ he says. ‘Please.’

I am frozen to the spot, staring at the barrel of the gun now pressed against Marquis’s shoulder. Ursa buries her face into the back of Mama’s skirt as the Guardian lowers his weapon.

‘Helina Featherswallow, John Featherswallow, Thomas Featherswallow,’ he says, ‘you are under arrest on suspicion of civil disobedience.’

Civil disobedience?

There are at least ten Guardians standing in the foyer. Dad and Uncle Thomas are pressed to the ground, their hands cuffed behind their backs. I stare at Mama. She is crying silent tears, her hands stroking the top of Ursa’s head. Why isn’t she explaining that there’s been a terrible mistake?

‘Tell them, Mama,’ I plead. ‘Tell them they have the wrong house.’

Mama’s blue eyes are electric. ‘Take your sister and cousin and get out of London,’ she tells me in Bulgarian. Someone binds her wrists together in front of her. ‘Get as far away as you can.’

My heart plummets.

‘Mama!’ Ursa is stumbling after Mama as two Guardians push her towards the front door, searching her pockets. Out on the street, a line of sleek black motorcars are waiting. Curtains twitch in the windows of the neighbouring houses. The sky is as dark as dragonsmoke.

‘Dad, please tell me what’s happening!’

I barely notice Marquis clinging to Uncle Thomas’s shoulder, shouting at him as the Guardians drag him by the arms. I’m too busy watching my own father being pushed into one of the cars. I get as close as they’ll let me.

‘Dad?’ I say, trying to keep my voice steady.

He swallows loudly and I reach out to touch his face. He leans forward, his eyes red-rimmed. He smells of wine, but the look he gives me is stone-cold sober.

‘People shouldn’t fear their prime ministers, Vivien,’ he says. ‘Prime ministers should fear their people.’

They push him into the seat and slam the door closed. I stumble backwards, blood rushing in my ears. The cobbled pavement of Fitzroy Square swims in front of me. Somewhere far away, I can hear the banging of fists against glass. A high-pitched cry pierces the air.

‘Come on, dear, let go now.’

Hollingsworth is kneeling next to a sobbing Ursa, trying to convince her to let go of Mama. It’s the sight of my sister, of her tiny fingers clenched tightly round the material of Mama’s skirt, that brings me back to myself.

‘Don’t you dare speak to her!’ I say.

I prise Ursa’s fist open and lift her bodily from the ground as she howls. Hollingsworth stands up, her lips pursed.

‘Remember what I told you,’ Mama whispers to me in Bulgarian.

There’s a hardness in her eyes now. The back of her hand brushes against mine, an invisible gesture of tenderness that says a hundred things at once. Then she kisses Ursa’s cheek and steps into the motorcar, disappearing behind a shaded window. I can still smell her perfume. I let out a choked sob as the car drives away and nausea rises in my stomach. Ursa has gone limp in my arms.

‘Class pass,’ a Guardian barks at me. ‘Let me see it.’

I reach for the pass round my neck and offer it to him.

‘Second Class. Age seventeen,’ he says to his superior.

‘And this one?’

The superior gestures to Marquis, who is staring at the empty spot the motorcar containing his father has just pulled away from. The other Guardian seizes his class pass.

‘Second Class. Age eighteen.’

The superior nods and the Guardian grabs Marquis by the shoulder, then handcuffs him.

‘No!’ I cry. ‘He did nothing wrong. He’s—’

‘Vivien Featherswallow, as a minor, you are not currently under arrest. But by order of the law you must remain housebound until your parents undergo trial and your innocence can be proven.’

Marquis stares from me to Ursa, a pulse flickering in his jaw.

‘The penalty for disobeying this order is immediate imprisonment,’ the superior continues. ‘Do you understand?’

‘Yes, but my cousin—’

‘Is an adult and will be tried as one,’ the superior snaps.

Ursa hiccups in my arms and reaches out for Marquis, but he is already being pushed into the last remaining motorcar.

‘Don’t worry, Marquis,’ I say, throwing myself at the car before they can stop me. ‘They’ll let you go as soon as they realise you’re innocent, all of you!’

He gives me a look of utter despair before the door slams in his face and someone pulls me away.

I turn round as another Guardian emerges from the house carrying a box, a knife in a leather sheath hanging from his belt.

‘The Prime Minister will want to see this. Found it in a secret cupboard in the office.’

A secret cupboard? In our house?

The Guardian sets the box down. ‘The key was beneath the mother’s dress.’

Rage seeps through me like a fever. He looks at me and grins.

‘Smile, beautiful.’

‘If you lay a hand on my mother—’

The slap comes out of nowhere. I stumble backwards as spots dance before my eyes. Marquis roars inside the locked car and Ursa’s hysterical cries ring through the street. The Guardian lifts his visor and looks at me with vague amusement.

‘Now, now, Guardian 707,’ says his superior. ‘That’s no way to treat a Second Class citizen. Miss Featherswallow is simply asking you to treat her mother with the respect her class deserves. Even if she is a Bulgarian leech.’ He laughs loudly through his helmet and I turn away.

‘Hush, Ursa,’ I soothe, trying to control the sob in my own throat.

‘Send that evidence straight to Prime Minister Wyvernmire’s office,’ the superior Guardian says. ‘She’ll examine it upon her return from the dragon territories in the morning.’

‘Be quick about it,’ says a cool voice. ‘This is a matter of utmost urgency.’ Rita Hollingsworth slips the paper she took from Dad’s desk inside her pocket. Through my tears, I can see a line of scribbles written in turquoise ink.

‘You were never interested in my mother’s research,’ I say. ‘It was all a ruse to get into our house. You betrayed them—’

‘No, Vivien,’ Hollingsworth replies. ‘ They betrayed you. And your sister. And their country.’

‘That’s not true!’ I shout. ‘You’ve arrested the wrong people!’

One more car pulls up behind the one that holds Marquis.

‘Prime Minister Wyvernmire has had people watching your house for months,’ Hollingsworth says. ‘People watching you . I told you earlier, Vivien, that you will find your future in unexpected places. When you do, you must seize and keep it, no matter the cost.’ Her brilliant eyes shine as they stare into mine. ‘I’m sure I’ll be meeting you again very soon.’

She gets into the car and pulls the door closed. The motorcars both drive away and I watch Marquis’s silhouette in the back window until it disappears into the distance.

‘Come on,’ I whisper into Ursa’s hair. ‘Let’s go inside.’

I pick my way across the glittering glass that used to sit in the front door. The dining room has been searched, the contents of every drawer and cupboard upturned. The table lies on its side and the floor is scattered with food and broken china. One of the paintings is crooked, as if someone has looked behind it. And Mina is crouched beneath the chaise longue, hissing.

For an awful moment, I feel the urge to laugh.

I set Ursa down and she stares at the scene with slumped shoulders. Her hair ribbon is gone, her eyelashes wet with tears.

‘Let’s just clean this up a bit,’ I say, forcing myself to sound cheerful.

Ursa looks at me with big, solemn eyes.

‘I’m sure Mama and Daddy will be back in a few days, and we don’t want it to be a mess for them, do we?’

I pick up the table and scrape the pierogi from the floor, trying to keep my hands steady. I straighten the painting and clear away the empty wine bottles. While I sweep the glass from the foyer, Ursa feeds the cat.

‘Eat nicely,’ I hear her tell Mina. ‘We don’t want it to be a mess for Mama and Daddy, do we?’

Afterwards, I help Ursa dress for bed.

‘I haven’t recited my lessons,’ she says, yawning.

‘You can miss them just this once,’ I reply.

I stroke her hair until she falls asleep, then close the nursery door. Downstairs, the dining room is silent except for the crackle of the fire. I sit on a chair and remember the curl of the Guardian’s lip as he pronounced the word leech . Are we being targeted, framed somehow, because Mama is Bulgarian? Poor Marquis is locked inside a prison cell on some false charge while I’m here alone in this big, empty house. And my parents … I let out a gasp, then a sob.

The penalty for a coup d’état is death.

Is that really the reason for all those nights spent talking in the dining room? Have my parents and uncle been planning to join some rebel group and overthrow the government? I can’t believe it. I won’t. The Featherswallows wear their passes, respect class boundaries and prepare their children for the Examination. Mama and Dad would never do something so stupid, so selfish.

People shouldn’t fear their prime ministers, Vivien. Prime ministers should fear their people.

Wyvernmire is serving her second term as our first female prime minister. She got Britannia through the Great War and has upheld peace between humans and dragons. I’ve never heard my parents say a word against her. So what did Dad mean?

I stand up so fast that my head spins. The Guardian said something about a secret cupboard. In the study, papers are scattered all over the floor and books have been tossed from the bookcases, their spines cracked open. The window is ajar, letting in the cold, creeping wind. The stub of Hollingsworth’s cigarette sits in the ashtray. I feel the tears well up again. This is where Mama and Dad spend most of their time, working to prove their latest theories about dragon behaviour and culture. It’s a room full of knowledge, of questions, of what-ifs.

Through my tears, I spot something. The side of Dad’s desk is … open? Heart hammering, I kneel beside it. The wooden panel opens like a door, with a tiny keyhole disguised in the decorative gold stringing. Behind it is a secret compartment, empty except for a penknife. I slip it into my pocket and shake my head in disbelief. They have been hiding something. And whatever it was is now sitting in a box inside a Guardian motorcar.

I scan the rest of the room. The worn green sofa looks undisturbed, as does the piano and the cabinet that holds my school trophies. Only the drinks trolley has been moved. It’s a painted globe, the top half of which can be lifted to reveal the bottles of wine inside. I used to love tracing the outlines of each country with my finger and learning the names of the different seas. I peer closer at it. There is Rumania, Yugoslavia and Greece, and nestled between them all is Bulgaria – dragon country. Around the left side of the globe are the United States, the place where Marquis’s mother was born, where some states live in peace with dragons and others hunt them like prey.

I frown. Someone has scored a line across the painted surface of the globe with a sharp object, creating an incision that begins in Bulgaria and runs all the way to Britannia. And just next to the line is a tiny version of Wyvernmire’s crest, a W entangled in a wyvern’s tail. It’s been drawn in turquoise ink. The same colour Dad uses in his fountain pen.

What was he thinking, drawing that on his drinks cabinet? Did the Guardians see it? What does it mean? First the mention of a coup d’état , then Mama telling me to flee London, and now this. I lean back against the desk and close my eyes.

It means they’re guilty.

If that’s true, then whatever the Guardians found in that secret cupboard might prove it. And if the government sees it, or it’s used in court …

My parents and Uncle Thomas will be sentenced to death.

And what about Marquis? A small moan escapes my lips. How could our parents do this to us? How could they have done everything they told us not to? Never remove your pass, never socialise below your class, never break the rules . The thought of my demotion terrifies Dad enough for him to lick a birch rod across my arm … so why has he done something that guarantees that Ursa and I will find ourselves in a halfway house before his body turns cold?

The clock on the wall says ten o’clock. Tomorrow morning, Prime Minister Wyvernmire will arrive at her office in Westminster and examine whatever evidence her Guardians have found.

I jump at the loud squawk that comes from the corner of the room. Dad’s dracovol – a tiny subspecies of dragon perched inside a hanging cage – is staring at me. He hasn’t been out since yesterday, when Mama sent him to deliver a letter. I pick up the cage, set it on the windowsill and open the door. The dracovol flies off into the night. I pull the window closed and stare at the empty cage.

I need to get rid of the evidence against my parents, but there’s no chance I’ll get past the security at Westminster. So, unless the box of incriminating papers decides to spontaneously combust during the night, there’s no way out of this.

A light flashes on in my brain.

It’s a ridiculous idea, probably the worst I’ve ever had. But what’s the alternative? If I don’t do something, then my sister will end up in a halfway house, my career will be over before it’s begun and my family …

My family will be dead.

*

Ten minutes later, I carry a sleeping Ursa out of the house. Mina yowls mournfully from inside my sister’s schoolbag, which is packed with a change of clothes and a favourite teddy. The night air is cold and the street eerily silent. In the sky high above the streetlamps, I see the distant shape of a soaring dragon. I’m lucky that Marylebone is only a short walk away and that I won’t have to sneak across any Third Class quarters to get there. A poster stares out at me from a tram stop, the image of a respectable family smiling obliviously while a gun-clad rebel with a dragon’s tail snatches their child from behind. The young protestors Marquis and I saw must have been victims of radicalisation, but my parents can think for themselves. So how did it come to this?

Sophie’s parents live in a modest red-brick house with an apple tree growing outside. The curtains are tightly closed and shadows loom across the lawn. I walk up the stone pathway, my arms aching from the weight of my sister. I rap the brass knocker and wait.

Silence.

I glance nervously over my shoulder. Then a light comes on in the hallway. Abel opens the front door. Sophie’s father is grey-haired, his face creased with age, or sleep, or perhaps the trauma of losing his only daughter.

‘Vivien?’ he whispers into the dark. ‘Is that you?’

‘Yes,’ I squeak. ‘Abel, I’m in trouble.’

Abel opens the door wider, beckoning me inside, but I shake my head.

‘No time,’ I say, hearing the tremor in my voice. ‘My parents have been arrested. They’re being accused of civil disobedience or something, but I have an idea that might save them. Will you take Ursa?’

Sophie’s father blinks.

‘Abel?’

His wife appears in the doorway, wrapped in a flannel dressing gown.

‘Vivien?’

‘I need you to take Ursa,’ I say, a sob rising in my throat. ‘I need you to look after her until I get back, which will probably be tomorrow, but if it’s not I need you to keep her safe and I need to know she’ll be okay, because otherwise I might—’

My voice cracks. Horror creeps into Alice’s face as she looks from me to her husband.

‘Vivien,’ Abel says slowly, ‘if your parents have been arrested, there’s nothing you can do—’

‘I can’t do nothing,’ I reply loudly, and Ursa startles. I lower my voice. ‘My family will die.’

‘Not if they’re innocent.’

‘ Sophie was innocent,’ Alice says fiercely. ‘And God knows where she is now.’

Abel seems to crumple at the mention of his daughter’s name.

‘Alice, if the Guardians come looking—’

‘Then they’ll find nothing more than two childless parents caring for a parentless child.’ Alice reaches out her arms to Ursa. ‘Give her to me, dear.’

I fight down a sob as the weight of the sleeping bundle is lifted from my arms.

‘Vivien, going against the law is more dangerous than I think you realise.’ Abel’s blue eyes stare into my own. ‘Our Sophie—’ He pauses, a hand clutching the doorframe. ‘Sophie tried to come home several times after she was demoted. The Guardians would escort her back to Camden, to her Third Class quarter, but she always returned. And we let her. Alice … Alice even tried to hide her. And now she’s gone.’

My chest tightens. ‘What do you mean she’s gone? Gone where?’

‘The council told us she moved to another quarter for work, but she never wrote to us. She would write to us if that were true. Wouldn’t she?’

He’s looking at me as if I might know what Sophie is thinking, or at least where she is. All I can do is nod. Sophie would never abandon her family.

‘Now don’t you go disappearing, too,’ Alice says to me, her eyes shining with tears.

I hand Ursa’s bag to Abel, and Mina lets out a hiss. ‘The cat …’ I mutter apologetically. ‘Ursa’s class pass is round her neck. I’ll be back for her, I promise.’

Alice nods, tucking the blanket round Ursa as she turns away. I begin to cry as the little golden head disappears into the house. Abel waits patiently for me to compose myself, and I’m suddenly aware of how much time has passed since I was last inside this house. The memories threaten to overflow, each of them now stained with shame. Sophie’s bedroom window fills with light and I know I need to leave. Alice has taken Ursa without a second thought. Would she have done so if she knew Sophie was missing because of me? If she knew how I tore her family apart?

‘Be careful, Vivien,’ Abel says.

I nod before slipping back down the pathway and on to the street, pulling the strap of my satchel across my body. I have a long night ahead. I need a dragon, a dragon with a motive.

Luckily for me, I know exactly where to find one.