In the Labyrinth of Drakes by Marie Brennan Page A

bothering to hide it.
    Suhail saw what I had given him, and his hands trembled. “It is the stone.”
    The Cataract Stone, as it is known these days, though it had not yet been given that name anywhere outside of my own head. I found the engraved slab during my exploration of the Great Cataract of Mouleen, but had not known its significance at the time. The stone, as most of my readers no doubt know, contains a bilingual inscription: the same text, rendered in both Draconean and Ngaru. The former was at the time unintelligible to us, but the latter could be translated; the Cataract Stone therefore served as a key to the code, a way to decipher the Draconean language and unlock its secrets at last.
    â€œSomeone went back to the waterfall,” I said, forgetting that I had not told Suhail where the stone lay. “He took a rubbing for me. I wanted you to have it.”
    He looked at me, startled, and then studied the paper more closely. “This is an original. Isabella—” He caught himself. “Umm Yaqub. Even now, I would have heard if this had been published. How long have you been sitting on this?”
    My cheeks heated. I almost dug my toe into the ground, as if I were a child caught out in a prank. “A little while.” Suhail waited. “All right, I’ve had it for more than a year.”
    He made an inarticulate noise: half laugh, half horrified roar. “For the love of—you know better than that! To keep private something this important—”
    â€œI haven’t been a complete fool,” I said tartly, well aware that I had been at least a partial fool. “There are several copies of that, and my will contains instructions that they should be released to the scholarly community if I die. I would never let such important data be lost! But…” My face was still hot. I looked away, and found myself meeting Mahira’s eyes, which did not help at all. She was staring at us both with open curiosity. “You are the one who made me see the importance of the inscription. Without that, I would never have known to ask someone to go back and take a rubbing. And I cannot translate it; I can barely learn languages spoken today. There are other scholars of my acquaintance who have worked on the problem of Draconean, but none with your dedication, and none with any connection to the discovery of this stone. I thought it only right that you should be the first to work on the text.”
    He stood silent through my explanation. I finally dragged my gaze back to his, and lost my breath when I did. Yes, these had been grey years for him—and I had just poured a torrent of colour into them. He looked fully alive, as he had not since he strode into the courtyard that first day.
    I might have cast my professionalism to the wind when I kept the rubbing secret, hoping someday to give it to him … but I did not regret the decision at all.
    Suhail folded the paper carefully along the original lines, cautious lest he smear anything. It had been painted with a fixative, but care was still warranted. “I cannot bring myself to complain any further,” he admitted. “This is a gift beyond price—thank you. But promise me you will make the text public now.”
    â€œI will.” (A promise, I should note, that I fully intended to keep. But having given Suhail the original, I could do nothing without one of the copies I had left in Scirland. My duties to the Royal Army meant I would not have much leisure to prepare it for publication, and my employers would not be pleased with me if I spent my time on something so irrelevant to the task at hand. All of which sounds like a justification, I know—but upon my honour, the delay in ultimately publishing the text was not intentional.)
    At that point Suhail noticed Mahira staring at us, and spoke in Akhian rapid enough that I caught barely one word in four. I could at least make out that it was an