“Do not apologize,” he said. When I looked up, I saw his wings relax incrementally. “It is not your responsibility to protect me from such questions. If I wanted to prevent Cora from asking, I should have taken steps to ensure that myself.” Now his wings drooped. “I did not handle that at all well.”
He could hardly be expected to. I know it’s strange for him, reading about the ancient past—a past that was clearly ancient even to the Anevrai, and simultaneously familiar and thoroughly alien. The whole way through the Hatching Tablet, I’ve been cautious about what I say to him and how, because I knew without even thinking about it that the subject would be sensitive. But of course Cora doesn’t know that, and this was the result.
I sighed. “It will blow over. Let’s get back to work.”
But Kudshayn made no move toward the table. “Someone should go talk to Cora. I would do it myself, but . . .” He drooped another wing-sigh. “I do not know her very well yet. She is more your friend than mine.”
Is Cora my friend? I don’t really know. She’s such a peculiar girl—no, a peculiar young woman; if I am going to complain about people calling me “girl,” it isn’t fair to do that to someone else. And as for what we are to each other . . . well, I doubt she and I will ever braid each other’s hair the way Lotte and I do, and she would loathe many of the things I enjoy. But I’d be sad to lose her help. Not just because she’s useful, but because I’ve come to enjoy working with her. Which I suppose does make her a friend.
“I don’t know what I’m going to say,” I told him, but I stood up anyway.
Kudshayn stood silent for a long moment, thinking. Then he said, “Answer her question. I think she will be happier knowing, but I would prefer not to speak of it right now.”
His family. I couldn’t help staring at him in astonishment, sure I must have somehow misheard him. But Kudshayn nodded, gesturing me out the door, so I went in search of Cora.
I found her in the upstairs corridor, where there is a window seat she has claimed as her own. She was curled up on it with one hand tucked tight under the opposite arm and the other employed in twining a lock of hair around her finger over and over again. She resolutely did not look at me as I walked up.
“I’m sorry,” I told her, standing a careful distance away. With Lotte I would have perched at the other end of the seat, but Cora doesn’t like people being too close to her, especially when she’s upset. “And Kudshayn is sorry, too. He . . . Family is a very sensitive topic for him.”
She continued to stare out the window, twining her hair again and again. “Then why didn’t he say that?”
“In a way, he did. Draconean body language isn’t like ours—well, some parts of it are. But his wings tucking in like that was his way of showing that he was uncomfortable with your question.”
Cora scowled. “How was I supposed to know that?”
It was a fair question. “You weren’t. If I’d realized . . . I can teach you how they behave, if you like. Kudshayn speaks very good Scirling and knows a lot of our habits, but he’ll still do things that are different. For example, he can’t raise his eyebrows when he’s surprised or curious, because he doesn’t have any. I can tell you what to look for.”
She relaxed a degree or two, but not all the way.
I think it might have been easier to carve the explanation into clay and give that to her than to say it out loud. What happened to Kudshayn’s clutch isn’t my story—but in a way, I think that’s why I’m even more reluctant to tell it than he is. How many years did he and I know each other before he said anything about it to me? And that was when I’d already gotten the general outline from Grandmama. But I’ve heard so many people say thoughtless things in reply, and I was terribly worried Cora would do the same, and even though Kudshayn wasn’t there to hear it, I was still flinching on his behalf—pre-emptively, since I hadn’t yet said anything and neither had Cora.
Which meant I was being stupid. Kudshayn told me to tell her.
I leaned against the wall, tipping my head to the plaster and closing my eyes. “Do you know how evolution works for Draconeans?”
The earl doesn’t have very many books on them—rather startling, for a man who collects so many of their antiquities—but Cora ordered a whole stack when we made plans for Kudshayn to come here, and has been reading her way steadily through them. She said, “Developmental lability means that the environment in which an egg incubates can, if significantly different from the environment of the parental egg, cause mutations.”
“Yes. It’s why Kudshayn can come spend time here and not feel horribly uncomfortable. Most Draconeans are adapted to life at a very high altitude, which means they do badly in environments we’d consider much less harsh. But Kudshayn hatched at a lower elevation, in a warmer climate. It means his scales are different from other Draconeans’—he doesn’t molt the way they do, for example—and, well, a lot of other differences that probably aren’t interesting to you, unless you plan to take up a career as a dragon naturalist. But the part that matters is, his mother decided to take a big risk and lay her eggs quite far from where she’d hatched, at the edge of what anybody thought might be viable.”
That got Cora’s attention. She turned to face me and said, “Isn’t that dangerous?”
“Yes. He has only one sister because the others didn’t make it. The clutch was a large one—six eggs—and two of them never hatched at all. Two others had very bad mutations, and didn’t survive. People sometimes think that developmental lability means the hatchling always evolves in a way that suits the new environment, but that isn’t true, and it gets riskier the bigger the differences are. Kudshayn is mostly healthy, but he has difficulty breathing sometimes. And his one surviving sister is very delicate; in fact, if it weren’t for doctors, she probably wouldn’t still be alive.”
Cora hunched in on herself again. In a small voice, she said, “I thought they might be dead. That’s why I asked. I thought, if they were, then he and I would have something in common.”
My breath stopped. All this time I’ve known that Cora is Lord Gleinleigh’s ward—but have I made any attempt to find out why? No, I have not. And I could pretend it’s because I feared that would be a sensitive subject and wanted to let her bring it up in good time . . . but that’s a lie. The truth is that I’ve been entirely wrapped up in the question of these tablets, and haven’t done a flaming thing to learn about Cora’s life.
She wasn’t the one being thoughtless. I was.
It took me far too long to figure out what to say to that. Finally I said, “Kudshayn generally prefers not to talk about it. If he changes his mind, he’ll let you know. But . . . if you ever want to tell me about your parents, you’re welcome to.”
She peered up at me. “Are any of your family dead?”
“Only my grandfather,” I said. “My grandmother’s first husband, I mean—the one I’m related to. But he died even before my father was born, so I don’t think that really counts.”
“It doesn’t,” she said. Which stung, even though I agree with her.