by Naomi Novik
“Your Highness, you can see your recruits will never make a dragon who can stand against a heavy-weight,” Laurence said. “The most skillful breeding program should require decades to achieve such an end. Even if by some method we should drive the Tswana out of your country, do you imagine Napoleon will give you that length of time, before he falls upon you from the west?”
Poor Hammond was much to be pitied, Laurence thought ruefully while he spoke, as being a very unwilling accessory to perhaps the most outrageous speech which likely an ordinary serving-officer had ever made to a ruling sovereign; he looked increasingly more dazed with horror even than distressed.
“Where I am mistaken, or my arguments ill-founded, I am ready to be persuaded,” Laurence added, “and I hope I offer no willful defiance: but neither I nor Temeraire nor any dragon of our party will lend ourselves, in the present circumstances, to a project of attacking the Tswana: an endeavor as sure to lead to disaster in its success as in its failure.”
When he had issued this flat ultimatum, there was not much other discussion to be had: dismissed with some abruptness, Laurence made his courtesies and departed. Hammond remained, at the prince’s command, and Laurence did not try to persuade him otherwise. He could well imagine that conversation: the prince should certainly inquire as to the extent of Laurence’s influence upon the other aviators of their party, and Temeraire’s upon the other dragons, information which Laurence rather wished Hammond to convey than to conceal.
“I will not urge you to act in any way contrary to your conscience; I would reject any such suasion on my own part,” Laurence said to Granby, when he had returned to camp; and with a look he extended the scope of his words to Demane, who raised his head from where Roland was sketching for him on paper the outlines of a maneuver for a heavy-weight beast: he had suddenly of late grown surprisingly intent on furthering his education as an aviator, and now in every open moment was to be found harassing the senior officers for any scrap of knowledge.
“I am not going to attack the Tswana to help these slave-takers,” Demane said flatly, recalling to Laurence that Demane’s own people had suffered similar insult at the hands of the Dutch settlers of Capetown, if not abduction from their native country. “I would as soon fight with them, instead; why shouldn’t we?” he demanded, to Roland’s sitting back on her heels outraged. “Kulingile and I aren’t going to fight Temeraire or Iskierka, but I don’t mind attacking the Portuguese, if they should start the fighting.”
“Oh! As far as that goes, I will say that I shouldn’t mind it, either,” Temeraire said, overhearing. “While I do see that it would be quite inconvenient that the Portuguese should be beat, since they are helping us against Napoleon otherwise, perhaps the Tswana would agree to help us against him instead: and I should just as soon fight with Kefentse. Even if he did snatch you, that time,” he added to Laurence, “he has very handsomely apologized for that, and explained the misunderstanding. And one cannot really blame the Tswana for being so upset; they have the far better cause, it seems to me.”
“I suppose that is a call for me to ask Iskierka,” Granby said, “but I know very well that she will be perfectly willing to fight anyone whosomever. Well, if it helps you make them see sense, I will go as far as saying I plan to be sitting on my heels; but Laurence, I can’t give you my word: there are those reinforcements to think of, which Hammond claimed would be sent us from the Channel. I didn’t believe that they would ever arrive, when I thought we needed them to make any sort of go of things here; but now that they would be inconvenient, I think we must expect them at any moment. And if they do arrive before you have talked all these fellows round to this scheme of yours, and there are British dragons going into battle, I am not going to watch them square off against the Tswana while I sit here and twiddle my thumbs. Thumb,” he added, rueful.
Laurence nodded silently: he wondered, himself, if he could under such circumstances remain a mere observer, without doing whatever he could to persuade Temeraire to join the battle; it could scarcely be borne.
Hammond returned later that afternoon and began a determined pursuit of private inquiry with Granby; who eeled away from him energetically as far as he was able, until finally cornered just before the dinner-hour: Hammond went away from the conversation dissatisfied and anxious, to be taken back to Paraty by one of the Mexican couriers.
“Well, he has made me commit myself,” Granby said, sighing as he swung a leg over the planed log which made one of their benches and dropped himself unceremoniously into his seat: they ate in the open air, their handful of tarpaulins gone for shelter from the sun, and very little cover otherwise. They had established their camp in the hills a little distance from the coast, to avoid the eyes of the French sailors and also their guns, and without relief of wind coming off the water or any shade from trees which had long since been felled to put up the city, the tropical sun was punishing.
“I only hope you shan’t get me dismissed the service, Laurence,” Granby added, reaching across the table, and then winced for the indelicacy: poor Ferris had flinched, and now sat staring down at his trencher of flat wood.
Laurence looked at him, soberly: he could not see another course, but impossible not to recognize that he could scarcely have prejudiced Ferris’s chances of reinstatement more effectively. There would be no triumphant return from this mission; at best they might preserve the colony against immediate destruction. Hammond’s offer of his good offices, such as they were, would not likely survive Laurence’s recalcitrance; and this entire action, working as it must to remind their Lordships of Laurence and Temeraire’s general incorrigibility, would not incline them to mercy for his former first lieutenant.
“Of course, we would have the devil of a time going after them in there, to begin with,” Granby said that evening: they had climbed up to the summit of Corcovado together under the cover of darkness, to spy upon the Tswana in their nightly conclave: the dragons huddled in a circle with the Tswana warriors and councilors forming an inner ring around a low fire: their shadows stretched away long like the spokes of a wheel. Out in the harbor the lanterns of the French ships were glowing out a misplaced constellation on the water, and the light here and there shone on the iron of their guns.
“But I don’t know what we will do if they do go after those plantations,” Granby added: while the deliberations were at too great a distance to be followed, Dikeledi’s head flung back in loudly hissing distress boded ill for their direction. “Do you think there is any chance the regent will go along with you?”
“I hardly hope so far,” Laurence said, tiredly. “At best, he may think on his danger from the Inca a little more, and seek out some truce; but he has a thousand slave-holders clamoring against any arrangement to which the Tswana would consent. And very likely he only thinks me a peculiar sort of lunatic.”
“Well, at least Hammond will have given them a better notion of you—or a worse notion, I should say,” Granby said, lowering his glass. “They haven’t a prayer against the Tswana without us, if they only have a short one with.”
“Granby!” Iskierka hissed up the slope at them, stones rattling away as she clawed partway up. “We must go at once: there are dragons coming towards our camp, from the south, at least five of them.”
“I oughtn’t have opened my mouth,” Granby said; Laurence gripped his arm at the elbow, over the thick straps which bound on the hook, and together they scrambled down into Iskierka’s reach to be put up onto her back. She leapt into the air with a mighty heave, and Laurence felt the rumble of her ceaseless inward workings beneath his legs like the grinding of a millstone as she drew up her flame, preparatory.
“Hi,” Granby said, thumping her in the shoulder with his fist, “that’s enough: those are our fellows, most likely, and you shan’t go flaming them only because they will make matters difficult. I don’t suppose their captains would love us for it,” he added over his shoulder, “but do you suppose Temeraire could talk the beasts round?”
“I think there is every likelihood of it,” Laurence said, as they closed in: Temeraire was on his haunches roaring out in greeting, and there was scarcely any mistaking the silhouettes of the approaching dragons: Lily’s wide-stretched wingspan, and the vast and impenetrable shadow which was Maximus’s bulk.
Chapter 17
M AXIMUS WAS BEING PERFECTLY UNREASONABLE about Kulingile, Temeraire was sorry to be forced to admit. Not that Temeraire did not understand his point of view, but after all, Kulingile had not chosen to grow so large; there was no sense in putting one’s back up. “And if I have grown used to it, after having been there when he hatched as quite the scrawniest thing imaginable, you cannot very well complain,” he added.
Maximus grumbled, deep in his belly, and said, “Oh, well, if he is a friend of yours,” and Kulingile rather uncertainly said, “Would any of you like some beef? Gong Su has just stewed a few of them—” which thawed him further.
“I am glad he is not mean, at any rate; not to be swallowed, if he were,” Maximus added to Temeraire, swallowing instead an entire cow. “And,” he added afterwards, cheered, “I rather think I have an edge on him in wingspan; I am almost sure of it.”
Temeraire was sure of no such thing, but prudently did not say so; everything went off reasonably and in the end they all settled into camp together with no outright quarreling. So there was really no reason for Berkley to be so distressed.
“Those damned blighters back at the fortress wouldn’t mention there was a beast of thirty tons sitting here at your back, would they,” Berkley said to Laurence, as he sat down at last: flushed through and downing a mug of grog which he now accepted, still breathing heavily. “No, it is all, ‘Laurence and Temeraire are up to their usual starts, go and talk sense into them.’ What have you done this time? That young whelp of an ambassador back at Paraty looked like to have an apoplexy when we told him we didn’t undertake to do any such mad thing; as if there were a chance of success, either. I suppose being dismissed the service once is not enough for anyone, ha ha.”
“The Admiral told us you had been reinstated,” Lily said to Temeraire, “but why are we not fighting: I thought that was what we were all sent here for?”
“I shall explain it all to you,” Temeraire told her and Maximus, “when we have all eaten, and slept: perhaps we ought to go and get another whale, so as not to have the bother of hunting for a few days.”
“No,” Maximus said decidedly, crunching the cow’s skull between his jaws, “no whales! If I don’t eat fish for a month it will not be too long: they did not have any meat on that ship. No fresh meat, I mean; it was all dried and mixed in with that porridgey stuff you gave them a notion of, and if we wanted anything better, we could go roust it out ourselves.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Messoria said, as she ate her portion more sedately, “there were half-a-dozen cows aboard only for him; but he would eat them all, nearly right away, and then it was complain, complain, complain, all three months of sailing.”
“I don’t see what is the use of saving them to get thin and tough, at sea,” Maximus said, injured.
Temeraire said, “Well, tomorrow I dare say we will find some more cattle, and I do not mind letting you eat my share to-night: how happy I am to see you all!”
There was something so very comfortable about having Maximus and Lily back, and all their formation also: Messoria and Immortalis, Dulcia and Nitidus, so that around the fire there were a great many voices, all friendly; and together they could certainly have stood against nearly anyone. There were of course still more of the Tswana, and anyway Temeraire did not want to fight them, but it was much pleasanter to think that they could fight, if they wished to, or if anyone offered them an unacceptable insult.
“Anyway it was still better than staying at home in England. It has been all watching the Channel, day and night,” Lily said to Temeraire, tipping her head back daintily to swallow the last haunch of her cow, “and not a single engagement; the French dragons have nearly all gone away, to Spain or to the east, and it is only a few unharnessed beasts who fly patrol along their coast now and never come across. So tiresome, but when we thought we might as well help Perscitia, with the pavilions she is building, everyone grew stupidly upset.”
“Dug out half the best quarry in Hertfordshire,” Berkley said to Laurence, “and tore up four dozen oaks in the Midlands.”
“So they sent us here,” Lily went on, “and we did not mind going; but now we have eaten, and I want to know what we shall be doing here? And why are you shy of fighting those other dragons, if they are the enemy?”
“I am not shy of fighting them,” Temeraire said. “Whoever said so? Only, they are not the enemy, in my opinion; they are those dragons we saw in Africa, and they are only here because they are trying to find their crews again: or what they call their descendants, who were taken for slaves.”
“Those dragons who took Catherine from me, that time?” Lily said, with a cold yellow gleam in her eye.
“You will meet Kefentse tomorrow,” Temeraire said hastily, “and I am sure he will apologize, just as he has apologized to me. Anyway, the real enemy are the Inca, and Laurence is sure that they will overrun this colony if we do not persuade the Tswana to stay and protect it.”
“So that part is true?” Captain Harcourt said to Laurence, her face baffled. “Hammond began to say you intended something of the sort, before he understood we weren’t going to oblige him, but I thought he must have muddled things up: not that I am in a hurry to go roaring in when we are outnumbered three to one, but where do the Inca come into it, at all?”
Laurence briefly acquainted them with the disastrous success which the French had found in the Incan empire, and Temeraire added, “We did try to stop it, of course: but she would marry Napoleon, for all we tried to warn her against him.”
“Small wonder,” Berkley said. “I’m only surprised you didn’t have to flee the country with a horde of dragons on your tails.”
“Well, we did,” Temeraire said. “—It was not in the least amusing; so I don’t see why you should be laughing,” he added, rather nettled.
“I would beg pardon if you deserved it, you great lunatic of a beast,” Berkley said, still snorting in what Temeraire felt was a most undignified way.
Harcourt and the rest of the formation of course had come direct from England, with all their crews, which overran the previously orderly camp in the usual haphazard manner of aviators; but they had also brought supply: guns, and powder, and chainmail armor to spare; and to the endless satisfaction of the sailors several casks of dark rum. Grog was served out with haste, and exchanged for fresh meat and fruit, while a comfortable bonfire was arranged for the captains, and the dragons laid down split logs around it.
While the preparations were under way, Laurence and Granby together described more fully the course of their unfortunate negotiations. “We cannot be certain,” Laurence concluded as they seated themselves, “but the Empress would scarcely have committed herself so fully as to order an attack upon us if she had not resolved upon the marriage: we must assume if it is not yet accomplished, it soon will be.”
“I suppose there is not much chance we could catch them this side of the Horn, if we set sail at once?” Little asked, sitting down beside Granby and handing him a mug of grog. “If he has lingered over the wedding-ceremonies, perhaps.” Laurence exerted an effort of will not to permit himself a look at Granby’s face: he would not have known of the liaison, save for Iskierka’s indiscretion, and so he would not know of it.
“If we did manage to find them in the middle of the ocean, I don’t know what we’d do with him,” Granby said. “Two transports at least, if not another ship, and trust the Incas to cram every dragon aboard that they can.”
“Well, so far we’re even,” Sutton said. “Captain Blaise has the Potentate waiting off the coast, and I presume the Allegiance is hereabouts somewhere?”
Granby stopped and looked at Laurenc
e, who also was halted by surprise: but of course his report to the Admiralty was still in his writing-case—and his letter to Harcourt very likely still in the courier-bag aboard the Triomphe, De Guignes having in courtesy accepted the duty of posting it. Even if that had been handed on to some French courier or frigate by now, Harcourt had been at sea for months now: she could not have received it. The evil news must come to her now, fresh and with no warning.
“Gentlemen, you will excuse me a moment; Captain Harcourt, may I ask the favor of a word?” Laurence said, at least hoping to give her a moment of privacy, but she stood up and looked him in the face and said, “Laurence, Tom is not dead?”
He looked at her helplessly; there was no help to be had or given. “Forgive me,” he said. “I ought to have realized I had outrun my news: the Allegiance was lost in the forties, after a five days’ storm.”
“And he wouldn’t come away?” she said.
“I beg you not to assign to him any such willful act of self-destruction,” Laurence said. “He was to my last sight of him engaged in the most vigorous efforts to rescue the ship from disaster, which until those final moments not the most cautious observer would have considered without hope.”
She nodded silently, and stood there a moment austerely pale and still; her long face had lost its youthful flesh in the crucible of the service and of childbirth, and her hair was pulled back into a severe plait. “You will pardon me, gentlemen,” she said, and walked away from the firelight alone.
Her slim silhouette remained dark on the edge of the camp a long while, with only Lily’s head bent down to her side, offering comfort. Laurence sat up by the fire, waiting, when the others had withdrawn to their tents; thinking she might wish to question him further as to the circumstances: if he could give her little satisfaction, there was no-one to offer more. But when she returned at last with reddened eyes and her skin blotted in places, and sitting down picked up her cup, she did not ask him anything; she only said, “What a dreadful waste; and oh! whyever did I let you persuade me to marry him? His brother is dead, too, and now that harridan will be after me day and night to let her keep little Tom.”