by Naomi Novik
She gave a jerk of her head, and Frette clearing his throat held open the tent flap; Laurence could only bow, and withdraw too slowly, wishing he had not seen her drop her forehead to her clenched fist, and the grimness around her mouth.
There was a dreadful awkwardness when he came into the large mess tent in Frette’s company. He saw none of his nearest acquaintance, and was glad to postpone that evil, but several remarks were made by captains little known to him, which he had to pretend not to hear, and worse than that was the discomfort and downcast faces of those who would not snub him, but still did not choose to meet his eyes.
He had been prepared for this much; he was not as well braced to have his hand seized, and aggressively pumped, by a gentleman he had only seen perhaps twice before, across the officers’ common room at Dover. Captain Hesterfield loudly said, “May I shake your hand, sir?” too late for the request to be refused, and then nearly bodily dragged Laurence over to his table in the corner, and presented him to his companions.
There were six officers at the small and huddled table: two Prussians, one of whom, Von Pfeil, Laurence recognized from the siege of Danzig, and another who stood and shook his hand, and introduced himself as cousin to Captain Dyhern, with whom they had fought at the Battle of Jena. They were refugees from their own country, having chosen exile and service in Britain over accepting the parole which Napoleon had offered to Prussian officers.
Another stranger, Captain Prewitt, had been called to England a few months before, out of desperation: his Winchester had escaped the epidemic, as they were ordinarily assigned to Halifax covert, whence he had been stationed on a lonely circuit out in Quebec to put him out of the way of anyone hearing his radical political views, as he freely acknowledged.
“Or perhaps my poetry,” Prewitt said, laughing at himself, “but my pride can better stand condemnation of my politics than of my art, so I choose to take it so. And this is Captain Latour,” a French Royalist turned British officer. Hesterfield and the two others, Reynolds and Gounod, were political sympathizers of Prewitt’s, if a little quieter than he on the subject, and Laurence gradually realized they were not incidentally supporters of his act, but were divided from the rest of the company precisely by quarreling over it.
“Murder, murder most foul, there is no other word,” Reynolds declared, covering Laurence’s hand with his own, pinning it to the table by the wrist, and looking at him with the focused, too-earnest expression of the profoundly drunk. Laurence did not know what to say; he had agreed, and had laid down his life to prevent it, but he did not care to be congratulated for it, by a stranger.
“Treason is another word, if you like,” another officer said, at the nearest populated table, making no pretenses about eavesdropping; a bottle of whiskey half-empty stood before him, and he was drinking alone.
“Hear, hear,” another man said.
There were entirely too many bottles in the room, and too many angry and disappointed men. It was an invitation for a scene. Laurence disengaged his hand. He would heartily have liked to excuse himself and shift tables, but Frette had abandoned him to Prewitt and his willing company, and Laurence could not imagine imposing himself on anyone else in the room. “I beg you gentlemen not to speak of it,” he said quietly, to the table: to no avail. Reynolds was already arguing with the whiskey-drinker, and their voices were penetrating.
Laurence set his jaw, and tried not to hear. “And I say,” the whiskey-drinker was saying, “that he is a traitor who ought to be drug outside, strung up, and drawn and quartered after, and you with him, if you say otherwise—”
“Medieval sentiment—” They were both standing now, Reynolds shaking off Gounod’s half-hearted restraining hand to get up. Their voices had risen enough to drown all nearby conversation.
Laurence rose, and catching Reynolds by the shoulder firmly, pressed him back towards his chair. “Sir, you do me no kindness by this; leave off,” he said, low and sharply.
“That’s right, let him teach you how to be a coward,” the other man said.
Laurence stiffened. He could not resent insults which he had earned, he had sacrificed the right to defend himself against traitor—but coward was a slap he could not gladly swallow. Yet even if dueling were not forbidden aviators, he could not make challenge. He had caused enough harm; he could not—would not—do more. He closed his mouth on the bitterness in the back of his throat, and did not turn to look the man in the face, though he stood now so offensively close his liquored breath came hot and strongly over Laurence’s shoulder.
“Call him a coward, when you would’ve sat and done nothing,” Reynolds flung back, resisting the push. He shook off Laurence’s hand, or tried. “I suppose your dragon would think a lot of your being happy to see ten thousand of them put down, poisoned or good as, like dogs—”
“At least one of ’em ought to be poisoned,” the other man said, and Laurence let go of Reynolds and turned and knocked him down.
The man was drunk and unsteady, and going down pulled the table and the bottle over with him, cheap liquor bubbling out over the dirt as it rolled away. For a moment no-one spoke, and then chairs went back across the tent, eagerly, as if nothing more had been wanted than a pretext.
The quarrel at once devolved into a confused melee, with nothing so organized as sides; Laurence saw two men from the same table wrestling in a corner. But a few men singled him out, one a captain he knew by face from Dover, if not immediately by name; he had streaks of black dragon blood fresh on his clothing. Geoffrey Windle, Laurence remembered incongruously, as they grappled, and then Windle struck him full on the jaw.
The impact rocked him back on his heels: his teeth snapped together, jarring all up to his skull with the startling pain of a bitten cheek. Gripping a tent-pole for purchase, Laurence managed to seize a chair and pull it around between them as Windle lunged at him again; the man tripped over it and went into the pole with his full weight: considerable, as he had some three stone over Laurence. The canvas roof above sagged precipitously.
Two more men came at Laurence, faces ugly with anger, and caught him by the arms together to rush him against the nearest table: drunk enough to be belligerent, not enough to be clumsy. He still had on his buckled shoes and his laddered stockings, and neither good purchase on the ground, nor the weight of his boots to kick out with. They pinned him down, and one had out a knife, a dull eating-knife, still slick with grease from his dinner. Laurence set his heel down against the surface of the table and heaved, managing to get his shoulders loose a moment, twisting away from the short furious stabbing of the blade, so it only tore into his ragged coat.
The tent-pole creaked and gave, and the canvas came pouring down upon them in a sudden catastrophic rush. His arms were free, only to be imprisoned worse in the smothering folds, so heavy he had an effort to lift it clear enough from his face to breathe. He rolled off the table, and then there were hands gripping his arm again, pulling at him. Laurence struck out blindly at the new attacker, and they went falling together, rolling along the dirt floor, until the other man managed to drag the edge of the canvas off their heads and get them into the open air; and it was Granby.
“Oh, Lord,” Granby said: Laurence turned and saw half the tent crumpled in on a heaving mass beneath. Those sober enough to have avoided the fighting were carrying out the lanterns from the other side, and others dousing the collapsed canvas with water; some smoke trickled out from beneath.
“You’ll do a damned sight more good to come out of the way; here,” Granby said, when Laurence would have gone to help, and drew him along one of the camp paths, narrow and stumbling-dark, towards the dragon-clearings.
They walked in silence over the uneven ground. Laurence tried to slow his short, clenched breathing, without success. He felt inexpressibly naïve. He had not even thought to fear such a possibility, until he heard it in the mouth of a drunkard. But when they did hang him—knowing it would lose them Temeraire’s use—what might not those same men
do, who had meant to infect all the world’s dragons with consumption and condemn them to an agonized death. Of course they would gladly see Temeraire dead, rather than of use to anyone they were disposed to see as an enemy—France or China or any other nation. They would not scruple at any sort of treachery necessary to achieve his destruction; to them Temeraire was only an inconvenient animal.
“I suppose,” Granby said, abruptly, out of the dark, “that he insisted on it: your carrying the stuff to France, I mean.”
“He did,” Laurence said, after a moment, but he did not mean to hide behind Temeraire’s wings. “I am ashamed to say, he was forced to, at first; I am ashamed of it. I would not have you believe I was taken against my will.”
“No,” Granby said, “no, I only meant, you shouldn’t have thought of it at all, on your own.”
The observation felt true, and uncomfortably so, though Laurence supposed Granby had meant it as consolation. A sudden sharp stab of feeling caught his breath: loneliness and something more, an inarticulate next cousin to homesickness. He wanted very badly to see Temeraire. Laurence had slept his last night beneath the sheltering wing nearly three months ago, in the northern mountains, treason already committed and a few hours snatched before they made the fatal flight across the Channel. Since then there had been only a succession of prisons, more or less brutal, for them both: and what had these months been for Temeraire, alone and friendless and unhappy, in the breeding grounds full of feral beasts and veterans, with likely no order or discipline to keep them from fighting.
They fell into silence again, passing the clearings one by one, the millhouse rumble of sleeping dragons to either side, their own dinners finished and their crews toiling on the harnesses with only a few lanterns, the faint clanking of the smiths’ hammers tapping away and the acrid smoky stink of harness oil. They had a long walk out in the dark, after the last clearing, climbing a steep slope upwards to the crown of a hill, prominently placed overlooking all the camp, where Iskierka lay sleeping in a thick spiny coil, steam issuing with every breath, and the feral dragons scattered around her.
She cracked an eye open as they came in and inquired drowsily, “Is it a battle yet?”
“No, love, back to sleep,” Granby said, and she sighed and shut her eye; but she had drawn the notice of the men: they looked up, and then they looked from Laurence to Granby, and then they looked back down again, saying nothing.
“Perhaps I had best not stay,” Laurence said. He knew some of the faces: men from his own crew, some of his former officers; he was glad they had found places here.
“Stuff,” Granby said. “I am not so damned craven, and anyway,” he added, more despondently, when he had led Laurence into his own tent, pitched in the comfortable current of heat which Iskierka gave steadily off, “I cannot be much farther in the soup than I am already, after yesterday. She’s spoilt, there is no other word for it. Wouldn’t keep in formation, wouldn’t obey signals—took the ferals with her—” He shrugged, and taking up his own private bottle from the floor poured them each a glass, which he drank with an unaccustomed enthusiasm.
“It’s not so bad, on patrol,” Granby said, wiping his mouth after. “She doesn’t need any coaxing to look out the enemy, and she’ll take directions to make it easier; I hardly notice anymore. But in a fleet action—I don’t mean she was useless,” he added, with a defensive note. “Did for a first-rate and three frigates, all herself and those fellows, and chased a dozen French beasts. But she hasn’t a shred of discipline. Pretended not to hear me, left the right wing of the Corps wide open, and two beasts badly hurt for it. I ought to be broken for it, if they could afford to give her up.”
He was pacing the small confines of the tent, still holding the empty glass, and talking swiftly, almost nervously; more to be saying something, filling the air between them, than the particular words. “This is the sort of thing that rots the Corps,” he said. “I never thought I would be—a bad officer, someone who ruins his dragon, some other kind of fool, kept on because his beast won’t serve otherwise—the Army, the Navy, they sneer at us for that, as much for anything else, and there at least they are right to sneer. So our admirals have to dance to the Navy’s tune, and meanwhile the youngsters see it, too, and you can’t ask them to be better, when they see a fellow let off anything, anything at all—”
He pulled himself up abruptly, realizing too late that his words were applicable to more of his audience than himself, and looked at Laurence miserably.
“You are not wrong,” Laurence said. He had assumed as much himself, after all, in his Navy days: had thought the Corps full of wild, devil-may-care libertines, disregarding law and authority as far as they dared, barely kept in check—to be used for their control over the beasts, and not respected.
“But if we have more liberty than we ought,” Laurence said, after a moment, struggling through, “it is because they have not enough: the dragons. They have no stake in victory but our happiness; their daily bread any nation would give them just to have peace and quiet. We are given license so long as we do what we ought not: so long as we use their affections to keep them obedient and quiet, to ends which serve them not at all—or which harm.”
“How else do you make them care?” Granby said. “If we left off, the French would only run right over us, and take our eggs themselves.”
“They care in China,” Laurence said, “and in Africa, and care all the more, that their rational sense is not imposed on, and their hearts put into opposition with their minds. If they cannot be woken to a natural affection for their country, such as we feel, it is our fault and not theirs.”
Laurence slept the night in Granby’s tent, atop a blanket; he would not take Granby’s cot. It was odd to sleep hot and wake in a midsummer sweat, then step out and see the camp below dusted overnight with snow, soiled grey tents for the moment clean white, and the ground already churning into muddy slush.
“You are back,” Iskierka said, looking at Laurence: she was wide awake, picking over the charred remnants of her breakfast, and watching the sluggish camp with a disgruntled eye. “Where is Temeraire? He has let you get into a wretched state,” she added, with rather a smug air. Laurence could not argue: he was a pitiful sight indeed, in raggedy coat and his shoes beginning to open at the seams; and the less said of his stockings, the better. “Granby,” she said, looking over his shoulder, “you may lend Laurence your fourth-best coat, and then you may tell Temeraire,” she added to Laurence, “that I am very sorry he cannot give you nicer things.”
However, Granby was wearing his fourth-best coat, as the other three were so adorned with gold braid and jewels, the fruits of Iskierka’s determined prize-hunting, as to be wholly unsuitable for actual fighting. It would not in any case have been a very successful loan, as Laurence had some four inches in the shoulders which Granby had instead in height; but Granby sent word out, and shortly a young runner came back, carrying a folded coat, and a spare pair of boots.
“Why, Sipho,” Laurence said. “I am glad to find you well; and your brother, I hope?” He had worried what might have become of the two boys, brought from Africa, who had so helped them there; he had made them his own runners briefly by way of providing for them, but he had too shortly thereafter put himself in no position to be of assistance to anyone.
“Yes, sir,” Sipho said in English as perfect as Laurence had ever heard in his life, though less than a year before the child had never heard a word of it. “He is with Arkady, and Captain Berkley says, you are welcome to these, and to come and say hello to Maximus would you, if you are not too damned stiff-necked; he said to say just that,” he added earnestly.
“You aren’t the only one who owes them,” Berkley said, in his blunt way, when Laurence had come and thanked him for assuming the responsibility. “You needn’t worry about them being cast off anyway: we need them. They can jaw with those damned ferals, better than any man jack of us; that older boy talks their jabber quicker than he does English. You c
an worry about their getting knocked on the head instead. I had a fight on my hands to make the Admiralty let me keep this one grounded for now: they would have put him up as an ensign, if you like; not nine years of age. Demane they would have no matter what I said, but that is just as well. Fights,” he added succinctly, “so he may as well do it against the Frogs, where it don’t get him in hot water.”
Maximus was much recovered, from the last Laurence had seen him: three months of steady feeding on shore had brought him nearly up to his former fighting weight, and he put his head down and said in a conspiratorial whisper, “Tell Temeraire that Lily and I have not forgotten our promise, and we are ready to fight with him whenever he should ask; we will not let them hang you, at all.”
Laurence stared up at the immense Regal Copper. All his crew looked deeply distressed, as well they might, the outlaw remark being perfectly audible several clearings over. Berkley only snorted. “There has been plenty of talk like that, and louder,” he said. “I expect that is why you have been kept stuffed between decks in a ship instead of a decent prison on land. No, don’t beg my pardon. It was sure as sixpence you and that mad beast of yours would make a spectacle of yourselves soon or late. Bring him back, do for a dozen Frogs, and save us all the bother of the execution.”
With this sanguine if unlikely recommendation, Laurence reported to the courier-clearing with his orders, looking a little less shabby: Berkley was a thickset man, but if the borrowed coat was too large at least it could be got on, and with a little padding of straw at the toes, the boots were entirely serviceable. His repaired appearance got him no better treatment, however. There were a dozen beasts waiting for messages and orders, but when Laurence had presented himself, the courier-master said, “If you will be so good as to wait,” and left him outside the clearing. Laurence was near enough to see the master talking with his officers; none of the courier-captains looked very inclined to take him up. He was left standing an hour, while four messages came in and were sent out, before another Winchester landed bringing fresh orders from the Admiralty, and at last the courier-master came and said, “Very well; we have a man to take you.”