Tongues of Serpents t-6 Read online

  It was scarcely calculated to win him approval from their Lordships; certainly none from Bligh, but there was, Laurence with a little dark humor acknowledged, something liberating in having nothing whatsoever of which he might be robbed by the law: not even hope. He looked at the egg, himself: he did not hold himself up as an expert, but the shell was certainly harder than it had been, aboard ship, and with that same brittle, slightly thinning quality which he remembered a little from Temeraire’s hatching, and Iskierka’s.

  “We could take no one else with us,” Laurence said, “at least, not consenting; and there would be something curious in abducting an aviator to make him a captain: the fellow could not help but be doubted, afterwards.”

  “Well, to be perfectly honest I think it just as well not to take any of them,” Temeraire said. “I do not think much of the lot: they were all quite unpleasant, on the ship, and they will think they have a right to the eggs, even though they had nothing to do with making them, and I have been taking care of them all this while. They have nothing to recommend them, any more than Rankin does: I don’t suppose the hatchling will want any of them.”

  “We are in too much disgrace, my dear, to expect to see any of them display to advantage,” Laurence said, “but Lieutenant Forthing at least is held a good officer, Granby tells me, and fought with courage at the battle of Shoeburyness.”

  “Oh, he is the worst of them!” Temeraire said, immediately censorious, though Laurence did not quite know what had provoked such a degree of heat, “and I don’t care if we are in disgrace; that is no excuse for behaving like a scrub. Besides,” Temeraire added, “he is wretchedly untidy: strings coming out of his coat, and his trousers patched; even Rankin does not look ragged.”

  “Rankin,” Laurence said, “is the third son of an earl, and can afford to be nice in his clothing; I am afraid Mr. Forthing was a foundling in the dockyards at Dover, and taken on for creeping into the coverts as a child to sleep next to the dragons: he has no kin in the world.”

  “He might still brush his coat,” Temeraire said, obstinately. “No: I should quite prefer no-one at all, to him; I am sure Arkady would be quite disgusted with me if I should allow it.” He leaned over to look at the egg, and put out his thin forked tongue to touch the shell.

  “I cannot quarrel with you on this point, if he has left the egg in your charge,” Laurence said. “The judgment must be yours. In any case, it would be difficult to manage. We must also contrive some covering, for the egg; and—”

  “Oh,” Temeraire said, “oh, no, whatever are you doing?”

  Laurence paused in confusion. “I beg your pardon?”

  “No, Laurence; I am speaking to the egg,” Temeraire said, raising his head with an expression of consternation, his ruff flattened against his neck. “It is hatching; however are we to get it away, now?”

  “Only remember, you must put up with him for a little while,” Temeraire informed the egg, as it rocked a little more, “as otherwise he can make no end of trouble for everyone, but it will only be a few minutes, and then you may choose someone else, or to have no one at all. And if he puts anything on you which you do not like, only wait a moment, and I will take it away directly. You might,” he added a little exasperated, “have waited in the shell a little longer, until we had gone away and you were quite safe: anyone would think you were not listening to me at all.”

  “Captain Granby, if you would be so good as to remove the egg from the prospect of any more interference,” Rankin said, as he and the party of officers came up the track and onto the promontory, “I would be grateful; if it would suit you, I should like to arrange the hatching here,” indicating the place where he stood, quite near the track and a distance from the promontory’s edge.

  Temeraire flared out his ruff: Rankin indeed had the leather hood which Laurence had spoken of, and a heavy net with chains, such as Temeraire had once been held down with, shipboard during a typhoon; he had not liked it at all. “Remember, only a moment,” he hissed at the egg, and then reluctantly let the aviators take it away: at least they were very careful, carrying it.

  When it was in place, Rankin detailed a couple of the younger officers, midshipmen, to stand on the other side of the egg with the mesh netting, as though they would entangle the poor hatchling if it should try and fly away. To add insult to injury, a boy was leading a handsome sheep on a string behind him, and as soon as the first crack had appeared, Rankin nodded, and two men butchered it into a tub—a lovely hot smell of fresh blood—and brought it over. Temeraire thought it quite unfair—one was so hungry, breaking the shell; it would be so very difficult to resist—and wondered if perhaps he ought take the meat away.

  “Granby,” Iskierka said, pricking up her spikes as she also observed, “I do not see why we should not have bought a sheep or two, ourselves; or a cow. I am sure we have enough money.”

  “It wouldn’t be polite, dear one,” Granby said.

  “I don’t see why,” Iskierka said. “Temeraire might have money, too, if he were as clever at taking prizes as I am; it is not my fault he shouldn’t have arranged things better, and I needn’t eat kangaroo to make up for it.”

  “Pray let’s discuss it later,” Granby said, hastily. “The egg is hatching, anyway.”

  The shell did not crack neatly, Temeraire noted with a critical eye; instead it fractured off in bits and pieces, and then the hatchling finally smashed its way out in a very messy burst, shaking itself loose. It was not very pretty, either, in his opinion: it was grey all over like Wringe, save for two very broad red streaks of color sweeping from the breastbone and under the wing-joints to trail out in spots along the backbone into its long, skinny tail.

  “Good conformation,” Granby said to Laurence, under his breath, “—blast it! Shoulders as strong as you could like.”

  The hatchling was quite heavily built forward, Temeraire supposed; and it had very clever snatching front claws, which it used almost at once: Rankin stepped forward with two quick steps, holding the hood; but to Temeraire’s delight, the hatchling snapped out its wrists and seizing hold dragged it away from him and said, “No, I won’t have any of that,” and setting its teeth in the other end tore it quite apart with a slash of its talons.

  It flung the pieces down on the ground, with an air of satisfaction. “There; now take it away, and give me the meat.”

  Rankin recovered, despite this setback, and said, “You may have it as soon as you have put on the harness.”

  “You needn’t, at all,” Temeraire put in, ignoring the looks of disapprobation which the aviators flung at him. “You can take yourself a perfectly tasty kangaroo, anytime you like.”

  “Well, I don’t like; what I like is the smell of that meat over there,” the hatchling said, and put its head over on its side consideringly. “As for you: you are an earl’s son, is it?” it inquired of Rankin intently. “An especially good earl?”

  Rankin looked a little taken aback, and said after a pause, “My father’s creation dates from the twelfth century.”

  “Yes, but, is he rich?” the hatchling said.

  “I hope,” Rankin said, “that I may not be so impolite as to speak crassly of my family’s circumstances.”

  “Well, that may be pretty-spoken, but it don’t tell me anything useful,” the hatchling said. “Does he have any cows?”

  Rankin hesitated, visibly torn, and then said, “I believe there are some dairy farms on his estates—several hundred head among them, I imagine.”

  “Good, good,” the dragonet said, approvingly. “Well, let us have a look at this harness, and as long as you are busy being polite, you might give me a taste while I am thinking it over; I do like your hair,” it added; Temeraire did have to admit Rankin’s was of a particularly appealing shade of yellow which looked a little like gold in the sunlight, “and your coat, although that fellow has nicer buttons,” meaning Granby, “but I suppose you can have some like that put on?”

  “But you do not want him,
at all!” Temeraire said. “He is an extremely unpleasant person, and neglected Levitas dreadfully, although Levitas was forever trying to please him, and then Levitas died, and it was all his doing.”

  “Yes, so you have said, over and over, while I was getting ready to come out; and all I have to say is, this Levitas fellow sounds a right bore,” the dragonet said, “and I shall like to have a captain who is the son of an earl, and rich, too; I don’t aim to be eating kangaroo day-in and day-out, thank you; or hurrying about catching prizes for myself, either. But that,” he added, looking at the harness which Rankin was with a slightly uncertain air proferring, “is not nice enough by half: those buckles are dirty, it looks to me.”

  “They are certainly dirty,” Temeraire put in urgently, “and so was Levitas’s harness, all the while: quite covered with dirt, and Rankin would not even let him bathe.”

  “This is only a temporary harness,” Rankin said, adding tentatively, “and I shall have a nicer made for you, chased with gold,” in what Temeraire felt was a quite shameful bargaining sort of manner.

  “Ah, now that sounds more like,” the dragonet said.

  “And I shall give you a name, straightaway,” Rankin added, with more firmness. “We shall call you Serenitus—”

  “I have been thinking Conquistador, myself,” the dragonet interrupted him, “or perhaps Caesar; only as I understand it, the conquistadores came out of it with a good deal more gold.”

  “No-one is going to call you Caesar,” Temeraire said, revolted. “You are only going to be a middle-weight, anyway, if you are that big: Wringe is not even as big as a Reaper.”

  “You never know,” the dragonet said, unphazed. “It is better to be prepared. I think Caesar will suit me very well, now I think about it a little more.”

  “Well, I wash my hands of it all,” Temeraire said to Laurence, afterwards, in more than a little aggravation, watching Caesar—oh! how ridiculous—eating a second sheep; Rankin had sent out for it, after Caesar had eaten all the first one, down to the scraps, and suggested with a very transparent air that perhaps eating quite a lot while he was fresh-hatched would help him to grow bigger. “And I do not believe that at all,” he added.

  “Well, my dear, they seem to me admirably suited,” Laurence said dryly. “Only I am damned if I know what we are to do now.”

  Chapter 4

  “LAURENCE, I HOPE you will forgive me,” Granby said, low, while across the way Caesar continued his depredations upon the livestock which Rankin had evidently intended for his first week of feedings. “I didn’t mean to say a word, unless he should manage to harness the beast; but he has, and there is no way around it—you must let me go-between, and make up the quarrel.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Laurence said, doubtfully, certain he had misunderstood; but Granby shook his head and said, “I know it’s not what you are used to; but pray don’t be stiff-necked about it: there can’t be two captains in a covert at dagger-ends forever and anon, and you can’t fight him; so it must be made up, whatever you think of the blighted wretch,” he added, rather failing at conciliation.

  It was by no means what Laurence was used to; the thought of offering Rankin anything so like apology, for an act which had been richly merited by his behavior, and which Laurence would gladly have drawn swords to justify, appalled more than he could easily bear.

  “You needn’t think of it that way,” Granby said, “for it’s only that you have the heavier beast, you know: that is the rule. It’s for you to make the first gesture; he can’t, without looking shy. And it don’t signify you aren’t a captain anymore in the official way, because that doesn’t make Temeraire vanish into the air.”

  Laurence could not be so easily reconciled, despite all the obvious sense in this policy, to a gesture which to him partook of the worst part of both withdrawal and deceit. “For I do not withdraw, John; I cannot withdraw in the least. It would be rankest falsehood for me to pretend in any way to regret my actions, or any offense which was given by them; and under the circumstances, such a withdrawal must bear a character of self-interest which I must despise.”

  “Lord, I am not saying you must truckle to the fellow!” Granby said, with a look half affection and half exasperation. “Nothing of the sort; you only need to let me go forward, and have a word with him, and then you shan’t speak of it again, either of you: that is all. No-one will think any less of you: the contrary, for it would be rotten for the dragonet, you know. If you are giving his captain the go-by, it must make a quarrel between him and Temeraire, too, and you can’t say that is fair.”

  This argument had too much justice for Laurence to ignore; he managed barely to make himself nod, once, by way of granting permission, and looked the other way when Rankin joined Granby’s table that night, in a small hostelry, for the dinner which should honor his promotion. Granby cast a worried look at him, sidelong, and said to Rankin, in tones of slightly excessive heartiness, “I am afraid Caesar means to lead you something of a merry chase, sir; a most determined beast.”

  Granby, who had more knowledge of the management of a determined if not obstreperous beast than any ten men, might have been pardoned for some degree of private satisfaction in this remark. “If it is any consolation,” he had said to Laurence, earlier, rather more frankly, “the little beast is his just deserts, anyway: how I will laugh to see him dragged hither and yon, protesting all he likes that Caesar must obey. That creature won’t take being shot off in a corner and left to rot.”

  Laurence could not wholly take amusement in any part of the circumstances which forced him to endure Rankin’s company; but he did not deny a certain grim satisfaction, which became incredulous when Rankin answered, coolly, “You are very mistaken, Captain Granby; I anticipate nothing of the sort.

  “That there has been some mismanagement of the egg, I cannot dispute,” Rankin added, “nor that his hatching did not give cause for concerns such as you have described: but I have been most heartened since those first moments to find Caesar a most complaisant creature by nature. Indeed, it is not too far to say I think him a most remarkable beast, quite out of the common way in intelligence and in tractability.”

  Laurence forgot his feelings in bemusement and Granby looked equally at a loss for response, when so far as they had seen, Caesar had spent the afternoon demonstrating only an insistent gluttony. Perhaps Rankin chose to deceive himself, rather than think himself overmatched, Laurence wondered; but Rankin added, with a self-satisfaction that seemed past mere wishful thinking, “I have already begun instructing him on better principles, and I have every hope of shaping him into the attentive and obedient beast which must be the ambition of every aviator. Already he begins to partake of my sentiments and understanding as he ought, and to value my opinion over all others.”

  “Well,” Granby said doubtfully, then, “Mr. Forthing, the bottle stands by you,” and the conversation limped away into a fresh direction; but in the morning Laurence was astonished to find Rankin at the promontory, with a book, to attend Caesar’s breakfast. He seated himself at Caesar’s side and began to read to the dragonet as the beast ate: an aviation manual of some sort, Laurence collected from what he overheard, although the language was very peculiar.

  “Oh, he has never dug up that antique thing,” Granby said, with disgust, and added, “It is from the Tudor age, I think; all about how to manage a dragon. We read it in school, but I cannot think of anyone who gives it a thought anymore.”

  Caesar listened very attentively, however, while he gnawed on a bone, and said earnestly, “My dear captain, I cannot disagree at all, it seems very sensible indeed; pray do you think I ought to try and manage another sheep? I take it quite to heart, what the book says about the importance of early feeding. If it accords with your judgment, of course: I am wholly willing to be guided by your superior experience; but I must say I find I am so much better able to attend when I am quite full.”

  “This,” Iskierka said, “is what comes of worrying about h
atchlings.”

  Temeraire did not think that was very just: he had not worried about Caesar for very long, certainly, and at the present moment he would not have given one scrap of liver for all Caesar’s health and happiness; not, of course, that Caesar seemed to be in any short supply of either. In one week he had eaten nine sheep, an entire cow, a tunny, and even three kangaroos, after Rankin had been forced to reconsider the speed at which he was depleting his funds.

  That would have been quite enough to make the dragonet intolerable, particularly the smacking, gloating way in which he took his gluttonous meals, but apart from these offensive habits, he would strut, and wake one up out of a pleasant drowse in the midday heat by singing out loudly, “Oh, my captain is coming to see me,” and he would with very great satisfaction inform Rankin that he was looking very fine, that day, and make a pointed note of every bit of gold or decoration which he wore.

  The one consolation which Temeraire had promised himself, Rankin’s certain neglect, which should also ensure his absence, did not materialize: instead Rankin was forever coming, and so Temeraire had to endure not only Caesar, but Rankin also, and hear his irritating voice all the day, reading out from this absurd book full of nonsense about how one ought to never ask questions of one’s captain, and spend all one’s time practicing formation-maneuvers.

  “I cannot understand in the least,” Temeraire complained, “why when he had the very nicest of dragons, he was never to be seen; and now one cannot be rid of him. I have even hinted a little that he might take himself off, in the afternoons when it is so very hot and one wishes only to sleep, but he will never go.”

  “I imagine he had a better chance of society more to his liking, in Britain,” Laurence said. “He was a courier-captain on light duty, and might easily visit friends of his social order; he has never been a particular favorite, among other aviators.”