They left Freid the following day and flew north towards Ezgardia. The Parunachian was accompanied by a handful of smaller vessels, mostly freighters loaded with the bulkier trade goods. The most valuable items were kept aboard the main ship, along with Dryden's personal acquisitions. The shelves of the newly-refitted library were already filling up with obscure volumes, including several that he had bought in Freid.
His most treasured books were kept in a glass-fronted cabinet. They were a motley collection, in all sizes and states of repair. Some were printed in fuzzy type on thick creamy paper, others had coloured pictures or glossy paper , and a few were painstaking handwritten. The only thing they had in common was that not one was written in a script that Carenza recognised.
'They're from the Mystic Moon,' Dryden explained. 'I don't know how they get here - they just seem to turn up at random.'
'How do you find them?'
'I have contacts: booksellers and curio shops who let me know when someone brings in something unusual.'
Carenza picked one up. It was a small volume with thin covers and paper yellowing at the edges. The front showed a pair of young women in long loose frocks, carrying parasols.
'That's a storybook,' he said. 'I haven't translated much of it yet; it seems to be about a man named Dashwood and his descendants.'
'You can read it?'
He pulled out a fat book with familiar Gaean writing on the spine.
'This is my real prize: a guide to the secret language of the Zaibach sorcerors. It's called English, and seems to come from the Mystic Moon. Some of these books are written in it, but not all. So far I've identified eleven different languages in five scripts.'
'Can you teach me?' Carenza asked.
'I'll try. English isn't an easy language. Well, it seems easy at first because the words are short and simple, but there are so many ways to put them together. And the written language has very complicated rules. I wouldn't like to try and speak it to a native, but I can understand well enough to read most things.'
'Well, I'm not planning to go anywhere else for some time, and it will give me something interesting to do.'
Carenza found the project totally absorbing. She worked through the exercises from the primer with Dryden, and was soon practicing with him whilst he posed for his portrait. At first Alessandro objected to the distraction, but as she grew more fluent and confident, her reading occupied Dryden's attention so thoroughly that he forgot to fidget. Despite this improvement in his sitter's behaviour, however, the artist continued to look disapprovingly at her every time she attended a sitting. It was most vexing. She was trying to like the man - did like him, in most respects - but his jealousy of her closeness to Dryden was rather tiresome.
One evening after dinner, when Dryden had gone off to look for a book he had mislaid, Alessandro approached her with a look of determination on his face.
'You don't trust me, do you, signorina?'
Carenza pretended not to understand what he meant.
'With your brother,' he added.
She cursed inwardly. She had been hoping to avoid a confrontation like this, hoping that a display of vigilance on her part would be sufficient. Now Alessandro was forcing the issue. She put down her own book and looked up at him.
'Well can you blame me?' she said. 'He is only sixteen, and you're, what, twenty-two? Twenty-three?'
'Twenty-two,' he said, taking a seat on the couch opposite her and leaning forward with his hands clasped loosely in his lap. 'Six years is not so great a difference, you know. Are you not five years older than him yourself?'
She looked away.
'I know what's really bothering you,' he said, his eyes narrowing. 'It is because you think it is wrong for a man to love another man.'
'No, I don't.'
'I don't believe you.'
Carenza turned to look at him. His face was set in an expression of contempt, but there was fear and hopelessness in his eyes. She chose her next words carefully.
'If I had a sixteen-year-old sister, and I found out that she had been posing half-naked for a man who was clearly in love with her, would I be wrong to fear for her virtue?'
'No, but-'
'But boys are different.'
'Yes.'
'Because you cannot get a boy pregnant or ruin his chances in the marriage market, that makes him fair game?'
Alessandro had the grace to look sheepish.
'I suppose when you put it like that, it does seem rather unfair,' he said.
'Yes it does.'
He laughed softly, leaning back in his seat.
'What's so funny?' she asked.
'I was just thinking that this whole conversation is so pointless.'
'Pointless! I cannot believe that you can be so insensitive!' She tried to keep her voice down, fearing that Dryden would return at any moment.
'My dear signorina, the conversation is pointless because your brother is completely uninterested in me.'
'He is?'
Alessandro laughed again, more loudly this time.
'If you had seen the books he bought in Freid, you would not doubt that he has a healthy interest in young ladies. And I am not so insensitive as to press my attentions where they are not welcome.'
'Oh.'
He leant forward again, gazing directly into her eyes.
'What kind of monster do you think I am? You think that because I cannot entirely stop my eyes from following him or my heart from loving him, that I cannot command my limbs well enough to leave him alone?'
'I'm sorry. It's just, well, this is all quite new and strange to me. I've read about it in books, the love of one man for another, I mean, but it is simply not discussed in polite society. I-' She blushed. 'I've never actually met someone like...like you before.'
He smiled and patted her hand. 'That's all right. As long as you don't hate me, I can forgive you for doubting me.'
'Found it!' Dryden sauntered in, waving a book. 'Hey, Sandro, if you're going to paw my sister I hope you intend to make an honest woman of her.'
Carenza and Alessandro just looked at one another and burst into fits of laughter, leaving Dryden to scratch his head in bewilderment.
The painting, which Alessandro had titled "Divine Bounty", was finished at last. Dryden wanted to hang it in the dining room, but Carenza persuaded him that he would enjoy it more if he hung it in his study where he would see it every day. She refrained from adding that so openly sensuous a picture really belonged in a boudoir, not on public display.
'So, what will you do now you've finished my brother's portrait, Master di Luca?'
He looked wistfully at Dryden, who was trying the picture out on various walls of his study. There were fewer bookshelves in here than in the library proper, but the choices were still limited.
'I have an offer of a commission in Daedalus,' he said. 'A fresco depicting the Fall of Atlantis.'
'He's been begging birds' wings from the kitchens in order to understand their anatomy, you know,' said Dryden, looking over his shoulder. 'At first I thought you were planning to dress me in feathers, Sandro.'
'That would have been a very bad idea - you would never have sat still then. No, the wings are for the Atlanteans.'
'They had wings?' Dryden asked. 'Cool! Hey, does that mean they're related to Draconians?' He put the painting down, interested now they were discussing one of his favourite topics - ancient mysteries.
'Draconians?' Carenza asked. She had heard that name somewhere before.
'Some people call them demons,' Alessandro explained, 'but the old legends say they are the descendants of the people of Atlantis.'
'Are there any still alive?'
'Oh yes,' said Dryden, 'there are still a few Draconians on Gaea, though they generally hide the fact from humans.'
'I would have thought it was pretty difficult to hide something like that. Unless the wings are very small.'
'I imagine their wings are quite large, since they are said to be able to fly,' Alessandro said.
Dryden nodded vigorously.
'As I understand it, the wings are kind of magical; they can just pop them in and out when they need them, so most of the time they look just like ordinary humans.'
Carenza gasped. Ordinary humans?
'That was what she meant...'
'Who?'
'Queen Varie.' She told them all about the night she had overheard Varie and Balgus talking, shortly after Folken had gone missing. 'She said that the Heart of Fanel - this ring - might react more strongly to Draconian blood than that of humans. I always thought she meant dragon's blood - but what if she meant Folken's own?'
'Prince Folken of Fanelia is - was - a Draconian?'
She nodded.
'His brother Van must be, too,' she went on slowly. 'And at least one of their parents.' She looked at her brother. 'Dryden, when we've dropped Alessandro off in Daedalus, can we visit Fanelia? I have some unfinished business there.'
* * * * * * * * * * *
In case you're curious, Dryden's books are mostly in various European languages, with a handful in Russian, Greek, Japanese and Urdu. The novel is a cheap paperback copy of "Sense and Sensibility", by Jane Austen.