Blood of Tyrants Read online

Page 7

 

  Chapter 7

  “I BEG YOUR PARDON,” LAURENCE said, interrupting, “but if you please, Captain, I would be grateful if you would begin earlier: the last—” He paused, not liking to give it voice, and then forced his way onwards. “The last I recall very clearly is in the year four. ”

  “Oh, Lord,” Captain Granby said. He was the captain of the fire-breather, an officer of twenty-and-nine years; tall and somewhat battered, short one arm, and a pleasant, likable fellow, if almost shockingly informal in his manners and his dress of peculiar ostentation: Laurence had not seen so much gold on an admiral of the fleet. “Well, I know you took the Amitié, and Temeraire’s egg was on it—that news was all over the Corps; but as for the rest of that year, or how you came to be there, I haven’t the faintest notion. I suppose Riley could have told us—”

  “Riley?” Laurence said, with relief for a name he recognized: his second lieutenant. “Tom Riley? Do you know his direction? I might write him—” and then Granby’s look of startled regret halted him, even before Granby spoke.

  So Riley was dead—his ship the Allegiance lost. Laurence rose and went to stand by the stern windows, to breathe in the sea-air in great gulps. Granby was silent where he sat at the table, but Laurence felt his eyes upon his back.

  There was a dreadful strangeness to sit across from a man who called him Will, a man who had been his first lieutenant, and yet have his face mean nothing; it was worse, somehow, than having been all alone and adrift. Granby had been all that was kind—they had all been so, and visibly gladdened by his return. Deposited on the deck, Laurence had been embraced with enthusiasm by a dozen strangers before he had been able to make his confusion known; since then, there had been nothing but the most generous anxiety for his health—an anxiety, however, which reminded him at every turn that he was ill, wounded, and in such a manner that he might never recover from it.

  Outside the window, near the harbor mouth, he could see the curves of the sea-dragon’s body where it dozed nearly hidden beneath the waves, its presence a warning. Their own dragons were on the deck, and on a few pontoon-rafts floating about the ship; he did not, at the moment, see the black dragon—his dragon. Temeraire. Granby was speaking in low voices with the ship’s surgeon, a Mr. Pettiforth, behind his back. “I must insist we halt this interview, Captain Granby,” Pettiforth said. “You can see for yourself the inimical effects of only this one shock. There can be no question that any further strain on an already-weakened mind must be dangerous. You must withdraw. I must insist; I do insist. ”

  The surgeon had vociferously argued from the beginning against any attempt to repair the omissions in Laurence’s memory by recounting the events of the intervening years, as more likely to do harm than good. “I consider it a most unique species of brain-fever,” Pettiforth had said. “I have heard of only a few similar instances described; indeed, I am sure the Royal Society will be deeply interested, should I have an opportunity to set down the facts of the case—”

  But Laurence had dismissed his advice: he longed for every scrap of intelligence, of knowledge. His feet had been bathed and bandaged; a night’s rest had seen him back on them; he could scarcely imagine delaying any further. He turned back. “Sir, I cannot deny this news is an unpleasant shock, but I am by no means prepared to halt. Captain Granby, if you please—”

  “I beg your pardon,” Mr. Hammond broke in, anxiously. “I beg your pardon most extremely, Captain, but I think we must abide by Mr. Pettiforth’s advice for the moment, and ask you to consider—I hope you will forgive my saying so—consider it the course most consistent with your duty. ”

  “I can scarcely perform the least duty,” Laurence said, “when I do not know what that duty is, sir: so far as I knew before yesterday evening, I was a sea-captain, not an aviator. ”

  “At present,” Hammond said, “our most pressing need is for your continued health. You can do nothing if you have been prostrated by an aggravation of your—your injury, and your presence is vital—utterly vital—to all the hopes of our mission. ”

  Laurence hesitated. Hammond was the King’s envoy, and evidently in charge of their mission to China; his urgency could not help but carry great weight. “Thank Heavens that you have not lost your facility with the Chinese language—I must credit,” Hammond added, “the extent of our practice, the several months of our voyage—your dedication there, Captain, has been very commendable, and I consider this the reward; everything else can be managed. I assure you, we will manage. We will begin at once to review the likely ceremonies of welcome: our arrival at Tien-sing, the forms of your greeting to the crown prince, and to the Emperor—”

  If anything had been likely to give him a relapse of brain-fever, Laurence thought it would be the programme of etiquette study which Hammond laid out, which would have been a punishment even if spread over the course of three years. How he intended to touch upon all its parts in the space of time required to sail from Nagasaki to Tien-sing harbor, Laurence had not the least notion.

  “All the more need, sir,” Mr. Pettiforth interjected, “not to add any additional strain upon your nerves. Avoiding any particular, any notable shock,” he looked at Granby with a hard, meaningful look, which Laurence could not interpret, “must be of the utmost importance. ”

  Granby looked at Laurence helplessly; Laurence drew and released a deep breath. “Very well,” he said, grimly. “I will be guided by you, gentlemen. ”

  He would rather have forgone the study, and closeted himself with Granby until he knew every detail that could be obtained of the last eight years from one who had been his close companion in nearly all of that time, from what he understood. But he could not refuse Hammond’s request. His weakness of brain had already endangered their cause—it was incumbent upon him to do whatever he might to assist a mission whose urgency was evident.

  Britain’s situation, and that of all Europe, was more desperate than he had feared at the worst. Granby had, to his great comfort, been able to assure him of the health of his family, but little else of good could be said. The story of the invasion of Britain, of which he until now had received only the faintest outlines, had filled Laurence with horror: Nelson dead—Nelson, and fourteen ships-of-the-line sunk. Even so complete a victory over Napoleon as had been achieved could scarcely compensate for such a loss.

  Indeed, Laurence was forced to give some credence to Pettiforth’s concerns: if there had been more such disasters, in the years he had lost, he did wonder how well he might support the news. “But I must learn something of my duties,” he said, “enough at least to carry them out: there is no telling but we may see battle, and at least the dragons must be exercised, surely? Captain Granby, who is the senior officer of our company?”

  Granby rubbed his face with his good hand. “It has been all in the air, anyway—Harcourt has command of the formation, but you and I aren’t formally assigned to her, or she to either of us, and—oh, damn it all,” he muttered, at Laurence’s bafflement—her?—and turning said, “look, Hammond, I must tell him something. ”

  But even when Granby had explained, appallingly, that Longwings insisted on female captains, and that the slim young gentleman captaining that beast was indeed a woman, he had not much clarified their chain of command. “It goes by the beasts, you know,” he said. “It’s not much use our standing on ceremony, if they settle it otherwise amongst themselves; it don’t matter if a Winchester’s captain has twenty years on me when Iskierka gives a snort, you can be sure. ”

  With four heavy-weights and a Longwing aboard, such a policy must surely have kept the command in a state of peculiar confusion: all the more so that the captain of the largest beast, an immense golden creature called Kulingile, was scarcely more than a boy, and not British at all but from Africa; Laurence could hardly imagine how he had been appointed to his post. “Well, he wasn’t,” Granby said, “Demane is from Capetown, you took him and his brother up when—” He halted abruptly, biting
his lip. “You took them up,” he continued awkwardly, leaving an ominous gap behind him, “as your runners, and he picked up the beast when no-one else would have it: came out of the shell deformed, and not the size of a lamb. ”

  In any case, despite his size Kulingile did not seem inclined to assert his precedence particularly; and even after what little time Laurence had spent on deck amongst them so far, he could scarcely help noticing that the other beasts seemed inclined to give way to Temeraire, if to anyone. Laurence realized grimly he might well himself be the senior officer, by such a measure, and his injury all the more potentially disastrous: better in some way had he been wholly incapacitated, than presenting this peculiar mix of competence and confusion.

  But he did not press Granby further for explanation. To have worked through an accounting of eight years all together would have been difficult enough, but it was still worse to acquire piecemeal details, and see the awkward hesitation on Granby’s face as he tried to explain first one and then another chain of events, yet without conveying any information likely to cause distress, entangling the narrative at every turn. He faltered too often, and with a look almost pleading, as though he hoped Laurence would suddenly be recalled to himself: even while that same hope, privately but deeply held, quietly died away in Laurence’s own breast.

  “So far as the command is concerned, then, I will defer to you, Captain Granby, at present,” he said, cutting short the attempt, “and I trust you will feel not the least hesitation at correcting me in any failure to carry out my necessary duties. For the rest, my health has scarcely had a chance to recover, after the exertions of my escape; let us hope that in returning, it may restore my memory with it. ”

  It was an empty sop, which he did not himself believe, though Granby seized upon it with eager relief and Hammond chimed in with eager agreement, although Mr. Pettiforth murmured quietly to himself, “Not at all likely—I wonder whether further degeneration ought to be expected, if anything. I must keep a journal of the progression—”

  Laurence saw them out. He was glad to be left alone again in his cabin, though housed amongst things he did not recognize: even his sea-chest was unfamiliar to him, new and rough-hewn, a cheap construction which must have been bought in desperation and which should shortly have to be replaced; a green creeping stain was already to be seen growing upon the underside. The chest was full of books, though he had never been a great reader: Principia Mathematica so well-worn the corners of the pages were smooth where he evidently liked to turn them. There were only two pieces of correspondence: one letter from his mother, another, with the direction very badly scribbled and nearly unreadable, from the Peninsula: from a fellow-officer, then.

  “Well,” he said aloud, “I might be dead, or in a prison,” and threw them back into his writing-desk, next to the log-book, which he also had not opened. He was resolved not to succumb to despair. He had the use of his limbs, and his reason; he had lost less than many another man in the service.

  He belted his sword back on, went up to the dragondeck, and found Temeraire rousing from an exhausted sleep and looking for him. Hammond was there before him, trying to keep Temeraire’s attention, and explaining in a loud voice, which could surely be heard across all the ship, “It is of the utmost importance that Captain Laurence be spared any unnecessary shock, which might further injure his weakened mind—I beg you to attend me, Temeraire! I assure you that we have every reason to expect his memory to return shortly, if you will only have a care not to—”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” Temeraire said, looking at him not at all. “Laurence!” he called, a ringing eager note in his resonant voice, which might be felt even through the deck: his ruff was standing up in a manner which somehow suggested to Laurence his excitement. “Laurence, how much more yourself you look: you must be better, I am sure,” he said, when Laurence had mounted to the deck. There was an anxious question in the words, however. Temeraire had been lately injured himself, Laurence gathered, by some mishap in the rescue of the ship; and his spirits had been badly beset by the belief of Laurence’s own death.

  It seemed absurd to think of so terrible a creature as fragile in any way. The head bending towards him was nearly the size of a horse, the teeth standing in the jaws larger than his hand, serrated along their back edges and hard ivory. Strangely Laurence felt no fear, no instinct of alarm, though it seemed to him any rational man ought to; he had seen, only last night, what appalling devastation might be wrought by this beast.

  But even without fear, it was difficult to think of Temeraire as vulnerable—and yet perhaps not so difficult: a first-rate off a lee-shore, and his the duty to keep her off the rocks. Laurence still did not wholly understand how he had come to harness the beast, to become an aviator; he did not know what might have impelled him to do such a thing. But for the moment, it would have to be enough to know that he had done so: that he had given up his naval rank, his ship, and all his hard-won prospects. No need to wonder, either, what had become of Edith Galman. She had surely wed another, a man who could offer her a respectable home and name. Laurence was determined to be glad of it; she deserved as much and more.

  Duty remained: his country’s need stood above his own concerns. “I am much better, indeed,” he said. “I beg you have no concern for me. How is your own health?”

  “Oh!” Temeraire said, “I am perfectly well, now; I have been a little ill, but that is quite done with; I am quite recovered. Laurence,” he added urgently, leaning his massive head down to the deck, and peering at him with one anxious slitted eye, “of course you know that I would have come for you at once—I would not have permitted anything to interfere—if it had not been for the egg. I am so dreadfully sorry. ”

  The rest of the afternoon was consumed in displaying this prize for him: the dragon insisted on Laurence’s being taken below, on the crate and all its careful packing being undone to display the egg. It might have been made of gold and diamonds for the degree of passionate interest which Temeraire gave it, and not only he: the fire-breather, evidently the dam, roused herself and watched with equal attention, so that Laurence could scarcely make out the unremarkable shell for having one enormous eye peering in at either porthole, blocking the light.

  He was invited to touch the shell, with great care and an open palm: a tender softness not unlike the head of his nine-day-old nephew, when that child had been laid carefully in his hands by a watchful mother. Having returned to the dragondeck and being pressed for his opinion, he used very much the same expressions as on that occasion. “A remarkable egg,” he said, “perfectly hearty, and the size prodigious: I congratulate you both extremely, and I am sure it will do very well; extraordinarily well. ” He meant his compliments wholeheartedly: he could well imagine the worth to England of such a cross-breed. His effusions could not have satisfied Temeraire, however, if they had been ten times as enthusiastic, until Laurence gradually came to realize that half of the dragon’s anxiety was to be sure that Laurence did not blame him, for not having come to his rescue.

  “You could scarcely have found me, if you had tried,” Laurence said. “I do not think I had been on shore half-an-hour before I was taken up. ”

  “I would have contrived, somehow,” Temeraire said. “I found you in Africa, after all, when—oh; I am not meant to speak of that, am I? But in any case, Laurence, so long as you are satisfied—so long as you do not suppose I would have allowed any lesser cause to weigh with me. ”

  Laurence was not entirely satisfied: the lesser causes had evidently included abandoning the ship, their mission, and perhaps even setting off a war with Japan: all for his sake, and here was Temeraire making apology to him for not doing any of these things. He began to feel there was an almost dreadful responsibility inherent in the rôle, a rôle for which nothing had prepared him, and which he felt wholly unsuited to carry out. The distance between this and a ship’s command seemed a vast yawning gulf.

  But he could not chide the dragon for his aff
ection; particularly not when Temeraire had been under so great a strain, its evidence marked in the dull hide and the weary look in the dragon’s eyes: his eyelids were heavy again already. Laurence lay his hand against Temeraire’s warm breathing hide, its peculiar combination of resilience and softness at once familiar and not so. “I have been restored to you in defiance of all expectation and without, I hope, any evil consequence to our mission; we must both be satisfied with that outcome, and I beg you believe me so. ”

  Temeraire sighed deeply, and lowered his head to his forelegs. “I am very glad to hear you say so,” he said. “I was sure, Laurence, that you would not think it right of me to leave the egg—that you would tell me, if you were here, that it was my own responsibility, and I could not leave it to others no matter how much I might wish to go looking for you, not when the egg was not perfectly safe. I was quite sure, but oh! It was dreadful nonetheless, and I did fear that perhaps I had judged wrongly. ”

  “You did not, at all,” Laurence said, with a good deal of relief: so a dragon need not be insensate to duty at all. And then he was at a loss: what ought he do else, for the beast? Should he order aerial exercises? He did not see the other dragons engaged in such work, and indeed it might have been a provocation to the Japanese, to do so in harbor; besides this, he knew nothing of what his duties should be.

  He looked for one of the ship’s boys: a small creature was darting by him on the dragondeck, head full of yellow curls and in a patched green coat. When Laurence caught him by the shoulder, the boy looked up and said in a piping voice, “Aye, Captain?”

  “Light along to my cabin and fetch my log-book, if you please,” Laurence said, and pausing added, “And tell me your name again. ”

  “Gerry, sir,” the little boy said, giving him a peculiar look; Laurence sighed inwardly and made a note he should have to get all the names given him, at least. He thought he would read it over, and learn the daily routine thereby; perhaps he might thus advise himself.

  “What a splendid notion,” Temeraire said, unexpectedly, raising his head; his eyes had brightened. “Of course that must help your memory return more swiftly. Although I must tell you,” the dragon added, “the log-book has not been very interesting at all. It has been nothing but fish and wind, these six months, before we ran into that storm. We have not seen a battle anywhere, since we had to run from the Inca, and that was ages ago. ”

  He was regretful. Laurence’s own thought: the Inca? And hard on that, it belatedly dawned upon him that the dragon himself, unlike a horse, or even a recalcitrant landsman pressed into service, might be relied upon to tell him of their work. “Temeraire,” he said, “do you know the names of the rest of your crew?”

  “Of course,” Temeraire said. “You have always told me it is the duty of any good officer to know all the names of his officers and his crew. ”

  “So it is,” Laurence said grimly. “Pray will you tell me them, one after another?”

  “He is already much better,” Temeraire said to Maximus, anxiously, hoping for confirmation. “I know it is quite odd, when he does not remember someone’s name, or a thing which happened in front of him, and quite lately; but you cannot say he is not better. ”

  “Of course he is better,” Maximus said reassuringly, lifting his dripping jaws from his share of the cod stew. “I dare say he will remember all the rest of it in a week or so, Temeraire; no need to fuss. ”

  But Laurence was so very strange—so very stiff and awkward; it was not only that he had lost a great deal of his memory, which was bad enough and very inconvenient, but he did not seem to know Temeraire, either, or any of the other aviators, for that matter. He had spent nearly all the last two days closeted with Hammond, and had said very little to anyone. “But I am sure he will improve, once he has had a rest, and we are under way,” Temeraire said to himself, uncertainly.

  There was some little difficulty over their departure: Temeraire did not understand, himself; he saw no reason why they should not have sailed out directly they had Laurence again, and he would have liked to: what if the Japanese should have taken it into their heads to snatch Laurence back? And it was no use Hammond’s trying to tell him they had no reason to do such a thing; they had kept him back in the first place, after all. And as for Lord Jinai—that was the name of the particularly rude sea-dragon—if he liked to stop them, he was very welcome to try. Temeraire felt himself quite equal to answering him, with Iskierka, and Kulingile, and all the formation at his backs; not to mention the guns of the Potentate.

  But Hammond had objected to that, also; and so a great deal of communication had gone back and forth, passed through the Dutch commissioner, who evidently did not like Napoleon at all and persisted in considering himself a neutral party to the war. “And through us,” said Wampanoag, having come over to share a bite, “which, I don’t mind saying, has done some good: they have decided to give you a proper dinner, to say farewell politely, and see you on your way. ”

  “That,” said Temeraire somewhat baffled, “is quite absurd: they would have been perfectly welcome to give us dinner, anytime they liked. ”

  “They might give us more than one, too,” Maximus put in somewhat wistfully: the cod had vanished.

  “Why, it’s not the dinner that matters, of course,” Wampanoag said. “It is the timing of the thing: if you sail out before they have given you permission, then they will have lost face; if they should give permission and you shouldn’t go, they will have lost face. And you shouldn’t like it any better if they should try and stop you, or try and chase you, either way. This way, everything will be quite clear. ”

  Temeraire still did not see very much sense in this: if all parties wished them gone, it seemed to him they might simply go: no-one was asking Lord Jinai to sit there in the harbor mouth, in their way. But Wampanoag seemed to think it entirely sensible.

  “And I will say, I am pretty grateful to you,” he said, “for opening the door, as it were. I like them very much, now they have decided to talk to me: very polite fellows, perfectly honest: easy to do business with. They don’t like to say no, so you have to keep a sharp lookout to notice when they mean no, but that isn’t so difficult: the older fellows of the tribe are like that. ”

  “I do not understand,” Temeraire said. “Why would they not have spoken to you before, when they do have these Dutch translators?”

  “Well, their shogun wouldn’t have it,” Wampanoag said. “They aren’t much for foreigners here, but I guess they have thought it over and decided, since the Chinese are throwing in with you lot, they had better start making some more friends. ” He snorted and waved his tail in the air. “They aren’t wrong, either: those of us who don’t want to get dragged into this mess you lot and Napoleon are brewing up all over the place had better stick together. I’ll tell you, you ought to think better of it. Bad for business, that sort of thing. ”

  That was not very fair, in Temeraire’s opinion: he did not want war—he did not object to battles, of course, but war did seem a great trouble for everyone. “But we cannot very well just lie down before Napoleon: he is always provoking war, and trying to conquer his neighbors, and tell them how they are to go on; only someone very poor-spirited indeed could endure it. ”

  Wampanoag shook his head doubtfully. “If you say so: it takes two to make a quarrel, in my experience. ” He shook out his wings. “But I cannot complain of the consequences for myself: they have given me license to buy more goods than they had meant to allow, on credit, and I suppose I will have a commission for Yankee ships to come in our own right before I go away again. I have promised them we will bring them a company of shipwrights straight from Salem, next season, if they will give us a treaty and let us trade, and I don’t doubt the President will back me if I bring him terms for that. ”

  “The President?” Temeraire said, and listened with mounting indignation as Wampanoag said, quite casually, “Yes: I have met him half-a-dozen times, and I am sure he will see the sense of a
proper treaty with the Japanese for us. I should have rather had Hamilton in the job, of course, but there! You can’t have everything, and for all that he isn’t a Federalist, Tecumseh is a clever fellow. ”

  He gave a final nod of his head, and leapt aloft, leaving Temeraire to simmer. “It is a good deal too much,” he said to Maximus stormily, “that Napoleon sits in Lien’s lap, and Wampanoag is off chatting with the President, and we must yell and make a great noise in Britain only to be seen by a general now and again. I have never met a minister in my life. ”

  “Why would you wish to?” Maximus said, sleepily. “Berkley is always saying they are nothing but a lot of tiresome old windbags. ”

  “Not to mention,” Iskierka put in, as her own pontoon-raft drifted closer, “that if you hadn’t interfered, Granby should have been a king himself: then you needn’t have complained. ”

  Laurence found the dinner, which he could not escape, a peculiarly constrained affair. It was held at the estate of the Japanese governor, in his gardens very near the shore, and the whole of it passed very nearly in silence. Hammond alone had anything to say to any member of the other company, having monopolized the conversation of the governor since the moment he had come ashore, through one of the translators; with an oblivious rudeness almost painful to witness, he had taken the seat at that gentleman’s right hand, although the servants had made a very valiant effort to reserve it for Laurence himself. Laurence had then been established on the governor’s other hand, making him unwilling witness to the rest of Hammond’s performance: a mortifying experience, as all Hammond’s too-anxious entreaties and half-apologies were met alike with silence, or responses brief and noncommittal: the governor betrayed by not the flicker of an eyelid his opinions on any of Hammond’s remarks, and offered no encouragement whatsoever to his proposals for an exchange of envoys, or an opening of diplomatic communications.

  The governor’s safety was secured by the looming bulk of Lord Jinai, who hovered ominously overhead in the shallow waters just off the coast, and a dozen Japanese dragons also in attendance, most of them in polished armor. There were not very many friendly looks exchanged between them and the British dragons: Temeraire had come ashore, and Iskierka, to keep close watch on Jinai; she in particular kept a gimlet and suspicious eye upon the sea-dragon, and occasionally remarked audibly of her perfect willingness to set the entire city ablaze if he should make any motion towards the ship and its precious cargo.

  Only Kiyo, who had hauled herself out of the nearby river mouth to attend the feasting, was in good humor. She had greeted Laurence cheerfully: no-one had dared to challenge her on the matter of the assistance she had given him. “No, why would anyone mind that?” she said, with perfect unconcern, when he had asked if she had been put to any distress. “I have been meaning to have a good look at one of these Western ships, anyway, that I have been hearing about the last century, and I am glad especially to have seen such a prodigious one, because I suppose most people would not have believed in it, otherwise. How large it is! I have swum all around it,” she added, a piece of intelligence which would not have failed to horrify Captain Blaise, or for that matter any of their party, “and we must certainly have some like it.

  “I petitioned the bakufu on the subject myself, and they have agreed we must let these Americans show us how to build them. And that good little fellow Wampanoag has promised that his crew will perform your Julius Caesar for me, before they sail away,” she added, with great satisfaction. “So you see, it has all worked out splendidly. And there will be fireworks, after dinner!”

  She put her head back into her wine-bowl and glugged away; but Laurence grimly realized she was by no means a mere carefree fool, pleasing herself, as he might have supposed before. He did not think Hammond would consider it a splendid outcome, to have the Japanese allied with the colonials, and busy at building a navy of their own.

  The fireworks, set off above the harbor and splendid, were a relief to all present, as preventing any further need of conversation: all rose and stood gathered near the shore to watch the blooms of glittering light. Laurence took the opportunity however of speaking with Kaneko, who had been seated some distance down the table from him, at Lady Arikawa’s side.

  He bowed deeply, when Laurence approached him, and addressed him as a prince; Laurence received the title with dismay. “I beg your pardon,” he said, “but I assure you I cannot consider myself deserving of the mode of address: I am not a prince, whatever fiction may have been invented for political necessity. ”

  Kaneko said quietly, “A thing cannot be at once true and fiction: and this, I think, must be considered true, when it is the foundation of an alliance of two great nations. ”

  He made no outward reproach, but Laurence could not help but feel one: he had lied to Kaneko, even if not deliberately. He awkwardly made his apology, on that score, and hoped rather than thought he was believed: Kaneko received it only politely. “I wished also to promise you,” Laurence said, “that I will do whatever is in my power to secure Junichiro’s future. His familiarity with dragons—”

  “The fate of the criminal you mention is none of my concern,” Kaneko said with an unanswerable finality, although when he turned back towards the fireworks the spray of the lights shone wetly in his raised eyes.

  Laurence did not press him. “May I ask you, sir,” he said, “if honor is satisfied?”

  Kaneko was silent, and then said, “Lady Arikawa insists it must be so,” somewhat reluctantly. He paused and added, “She has honored me with an invitation to take up residence upon her estate. ”

  Laurence wondered at the significance, and still more at Kaneko’s evident doubts. Kaneko glanced at him and said, “The honor of dragons can only with great difficulty endure conflict with their affections. The authorities hold that their best and wisest course is to retain a proper distance from any particular individual. I fear I have been the instrument of diminishing her standing. ”

  Laurence was silent, thinking of Temeraire’s willingness to spring out a cause for war and all for his sake. “Perhaps I take your point,” he said, soberly, and then had to raise a hand: as if knowing himself spoken of, Temeraire had broken off his own rapt contemplation of the fireworks, and looked over anxiously towards him, until Laurence went to his side.

  “I do not see why you must be speaking with that fellow who tried to kill you,” Temeraire said, putting out a foreleg, as if he would have liked to gather Laurence in close.

  Laurence thought, with black humor, that there was every reason: he knew Kaneko better than any other man present. “That was merely his duty,” he said, “and nothing ungentleman-like in his behavior: I have no reason to think he means me the slightest ill, as a personal matter. I can scarcely condemn him for trying to uphold the law of his nation, or its interest. ”

  “I can,” Temeraire said, “when he thought he would do so by putting a sword through you. ” He gave Kaneko, and Lady Arikawa behind him, a cold glare: Laurence shook his head and let Temeraire put him up. The sooner they were gone, the better; there was too much wrath still simmering, nearly palpable when he lay his hand upon Temeraire’s neck. Laurence felt again unequal to the strength of Temeraire’s affection: like a gift handed to him unexpectedly, and which he did not recall having earned.

  He woke in his cabin early on the morning, to the welcome hurrying thunder of many feet on the ladderways, the bosun’s shouts. Hammond was meant to breakfast with him—they were to review the order in which the presents carried aboard were to be delivered to the harbormaster, in Tien-sing; after that it would be on the order of the presents for the Imperial envoy, and how those should differ depending on the rank of the individual sent. Laurence struggled with temptation; temptation carried the day: he rose from his cot, dressed quickly, and called in O’Dea.

  “Aye, Captain, it’s a fine morning, and the wind and tide bid fair to get us under way,” O’Dea said gloomily, as he helped Laurence into his coat. “Properly into
the kraken’s mouth: that sea-monster is lurking ready there at the mouth of the harbor like Jonah’s own whale, and it’s sure enough the beast will try and have us down to the bottom if only it can. ”

  Laurence swallowed down a cup of hot coffee, very bitter, and took himself to the dragondeck. There was no opportunity for conversation amid the cacophony, with every hand turned to clearing the dragondeck and making way for all the beasts to land. The dragons carried on their own negotiations, as to which should take a first turn in the air, to make the quarters more comfortable for all: Iskierka and Kulingile leapt aloft, circling the ship; the rest arranged themselves in a complicated tangle on the deck, and the hands began to haul in the pontoons to be deflated and secured beneath the dragondeck.

  Somehow it was managed in under an hour, and the massive anchors brought up by the beasts themselves while the men merely wound the chain back around the capstan. “Make sail!” the bosun cried, and they were under way: a cautious progress out of the harbor, past the raised and suspicious head of the sea-dragon, who paced the ship ominously while they crept past the harbor mouth and out to the open ocean, his great pallid eyes watching. But the wind held all the while, and they were in the clear before the sun had even reached its zenith. Blaise nodded to his first lieutenant, and the ship opened her own wings: “Make sail, make sail,” the cry going up, the loud rumbling and snap of sailcloth unfurled, belling out with wind: coast and sea-dragon fell away behind them almost abruptly.

  Laurence stood watching the whole from the railing of the dragondeck, at once glad and disquieted, feeling himself out of place. He had nothing to do, and no-one to speak with. Captain Blaise he recalled very vaguely, having met him some ten years before at an assembly in Mallorca: a sensible man and a proper sailor by reputation and who knew his work; not a blazing light by any means, but to be relied upon. There was not another soul aboard he knew even so distantly.

  Save one: Junichiro stood by the taffrail, looking back at the shore. He ought not have been there, in the midst of the activity; it was a solecism, and several of the sailors cast him sour looks as they went past almost elbow-close, though on a transport there was no shortage of room, and he did not even understand their pointed muttering. He stood with hands clasped behind his back, and expression stoic, peculiarly isolated and standing out sorely despite his Western dress: a borrowed aviator’s coat, and trousers.

  “Gerry,” Laurence said, catching that young boy where he leaned over the rail into the rising wind of their passage, his tow hair blown up into a cloud, “light along to Mr. Junichiro, there, and invite him to the dragondeck, if you please; and be sure you bring him back along the port side. ”

  The sea-dragon was vanished beneath the waves, a handful of fishing-boats on the water receding, the low mountains of the coast rapidly diminishing. Junichiro lingered for one final uncertain and lonely look back at his native shore before he turned and followed. His steps dragged. In the morning, Laurence intended to find some work for him—surely there could be no shortage of it, on a ship so heavily burdened with dragons—and see him worked to exhaustion for a few weeks. It would strengthen his appetite and dull his capacity for imagination: both ends much to be desired, at present, where his health was concerned. A ship’s ration did not suit the palate of most landsmen, even ones not so gently reared; thankfully Junichiro was still young enough to adapt. And of an age with some few of the aviators, including one young sandy-haired fellow whom Temeraire had named Roland, in Laurence’s own crew, who according to Hammond spoke the Chinese tongue: Laurence would have his young gentlemen to dinner, to-night, and introduce Junichiro around.

  He turned his face back to the prow, and tried to persuade himself to be content. A transport was no graceful sailor, but the Potentate was answering beautifully to the wind so directly at her back, nearly her one good point of sailing. Surely no heart could fail to rise beneath so vast and brilliant a spread of sailcloth: four great masts rigged out from mainsail to topgallants. They might well be going twelve knots, a glorious rushing of wind upon his face and everything calculated to delight.

  The dragons were still chattering amongst themselves behind him, speaking with pleasure of the entertainment they had lately seen, and their dinner: the equal of any party of drunken officers after a revelry, with two bottles of port in their bellies. Laurence was hard-put not to laugh. It ought have occurred to him, he supposed, that creatures gifted with speech would of a certainty proceed to gossip. He was an old hand at not eavesdropping upon shipboard conversations, but the flow of their strange, resonating voices, which seemed somehow to issue from the base of their throats and not their lips, was a comfortable rumble in the back of his mind, until gradually he became aware that there was an absence. Temeraire was scarcely speaking, and when he did answer some inquiry put to him directly, his voice was quiet and subdued; he lay facing the prow, looking ahead, and apart from the others.

  Laurence slowly went to him; he felt uncertain—what could one say, to a dragon? He had no orders to give. But Temeraire’s head lifted and turned to meet him, something half-hopeful and wary in his looks; Laurence said, “If you are not otherwise occupied, may I bear you company?”

  “Oh!” Temeraire said, “as though you had to ask, Laurence. Would you—perhaps would you care to have out the dear old Principia Mathematica, and have a look into that? If you have forgotten it, you may at least have the pleasure of reading it afresh. ”

  Laurence was taken aback: it had not occurred to him a dragon might be a great reader, although belatedly he recalled Kiyo’s fascination with poetry. Gerry was sent for the book, and returned quickly; Temeraire dragged a foreleg forward, out from beneath the heap of dragons, and held it forth. He plainly meant it as a couch, and when Laurence put his hands to it, he found he knew how to climb up, and his body remembered the seat in the elbow’s crook as though he were going blindfold up into the rigging. Laurence sat still a moment with the book open upon his lap, struggling with a kind of horror between bone-deep familiarity and endless strangeness.

  “Laurence?” the dragon asked, anxiously. “Are you well? Shall I send for the ship’s surgeon?”

  “I am well,” Laurence said, drawing his breath deep; for what alternative was there? “Where should you like me to begin?”