by Naomi Novik
“And as likely to find three dragonets as three eggs at the end of it, no use at all,” Granby said; when Laurence asked him, he gave as his firm opinion that the eggs could not be far from hatching; or at least not so far as to set their minds at ease. “There aren’t many breeds who go for longer than a couple of years in the shell,” he explained, “and the Admiralty won’t have bought eggs less than halfway through their brooding: any younger than that, and you cannot be sure they will come off. We cannot lose the time; why they are sending us to get them instead of a crew from Gibraltar I don’t in the least understand.”
Laurence, less familiar with the various duty stations of the Corps, had not yet considered this possibility, and now it struck him also as odd that the task had been delegated to them, being so much farther distant. “How long ought it take them to get to Istanbul from there?” he asked, disquieted; even if much of the coast along the way were under French control, patrols could not be everywhere, and a single dragon flying should have been able to find places to rest.
“Two weeks, perhaps a little less flying hard all the way,” Granby said. “While I don’t suppose we can make it in less than a couple of months, ourselves, even going overland.”
Staunton, who had been listening anxiously to their deliberations, now interjected, “Then must not these orders by their very presence imply a certain lack of urgency? I dare say it has taken three months for the letter to come this far. A few months more, then, can hardly make a difference; otherwise the Corps would have sent someone nearer.”
“If anyone nearer could be sent,” Laurence said, grimly. England was hard-up enough for dragons that even one or two could not easily be spared in any sort of a crisis, certainly not for a month going and coming back, and certainly not a heavy-weight in Temeraire’s class. Bonaparte might once again be threatening invasion across the Channel, or launching attacks against the Mediterranean Fleet, leaving only Temeraire, and the handful of dragons stationed in Bombay and Madras, at any sort of liberty.
“No,” Laurence concluded, having contemplated these unpleasant possibilities, “I do not think we can make any such assumption, and in any case there are not two ways to read without the loss of a moment, not when Temeraire is certainly able to go. I know what I would think of a captain with such orders who lingered in port when tide and wind were with him.”
Seeing him thus beginning to lean towards a decision, Staunton at once began, “Captain, I beg you will not seriously consider taking so great a risk,” while Riley, more blunt with nine years’ acquaintance behind him, said, “For God’s sake, Laurence, you cannot mean to do any such crazy thing.”
He added, “And I do not call it lingering in port, to wait for the Allegiance to be ready; if you like, taking the overland route should rather be like setting off headlong into a gale, when a week’s patience will bring clear skies.”
“You make it sound as though we might as well slit our own throats as go,” Granby exclaimed. “I don’t deny it would be awkward and dangerous with a caravan, lugging goods all across Creation, but with Temeraire, no one will give us any trouble, and we only need a place to drop for the night.”
“And enough food for a dragon the size of a first-rate,” Riley fired back.
Staunton, nodding, seized on this avenue at once. “I think you cannot understand the extreme desolation of the regions you would cross, nor their vastness.” He hunted through his books and papers to find Laurence several maps of the region: an inhospitable place even on parchment, with only a few lonely small towns breaking up the stretches of nameless wasteland, great expanses of desert entrenched behind mountains; on one dusty and crumbling chart a spidery old-fashioned hand had written heere ys no water 3 wekes in the empty yellow bowl of the desert. “Forgive me for speaking so strongly, but it is a reckless course, and I am convinced not one which the Admiralty can have meant you to follow.”
“And I am convinced Lenton should never have conceived of our whistling six months down the wind,” Granby said. “People do come and go overland; what about that fellow Marco Polo, and that nearly two centuries ago?”
“Yes, and what about the Fitch and Newbery expedition, after him,” Riley said. “Three dragons all lost in the mountains, in a five-day blizzard, through just such reckless behavior—”
“This man Tharkay, who brought the letter,” Laurence said to Staunton, interrupting an exchange which bade fair to end in hot words, Riley’s tone growing rather sharp and Granby’s pale skin flushing up with telltale color. “He came overland, did he not?”
“I hope you do not mean to take him for your model,” Staunton said. “One man can go where a group cannot, and manage on very little, particularly a rough adventurer such as he. More to the point, he risks only himself when he goes: you must consider that in your charge is an inexpressibly valuable dragon, whose loss must be of greater importance than even this mission.”
“Oh, pray let us be gone at once,” said the inexpressibly valuable dragon, when Laurence had carried the question, still unresolved, back to him. “It sounds very exciting to me.” Temeraire was wide-awake now in the relative cool of the evening, and his tail was twitching back and forth with enthusiasm, producing moderate walls of sand to either side upon the beach, not much above the height of a man. “What kind of dragons will the eggs be? Will they breathe fire?”
“Lord, if they would only give us a Kazilik,” Granby said. “But I expect it will be ordinary middle-weights: these kinds of bargains are made to bring a little fresh blood into the lines.”
“How much more quickly would we be at home?” Temeraire asked, cocking his head sideways so he could focus one eye upon the maps, which Laurence had laid out over the sand. “Why, only see how far out of our way the sailing takes us, Laurence, and it is not as though I must have wind always, as the ship does: we will be home again before the end of summer,” an estimate as optimistic as it was unlikely, Temeraire not being able to judge the scale of the map so very well; but at least they would likely be in England again by late September, and that was an incentive almost powerful enough to overrule all caution.
“And yet I cannot get past it,” Laurence said. “We were assigned to the Allegiance, and Lenton must have assumed we would come home by her. To go haring-off along the old silk roads has an impetuous flavor; and you need not try and tell me,” he added repressively to Temeraire, “that there is nothing to worry about.”
“But it cannot be so very dangerous,” Temeraire said, undaunted. “It is not as though I were going to let you go off all alone, and get hurt.”
“That you should face down an army to protect us I have no doubt,” Laurence said, “but a gale in the mountains even you cannot defeat.” Riley’s reminder of the ill-fated expedition lost in the Karakorum Pass had resonated unpleasantly. Laurence could envision all too clearly the consequences should they run into a deadly storm: Temeraire borne down by the frozen wind, wet snow and ice forming crusts upon the edges of his wings, beyond where any man of the crew could reach to break them loose; the whirling snow blinding them to the hazards of the cliff walls around them and turning them in circles; the dropping chill rendering him by insensible degrees heavier and more sluggish—and worse prey to the ice, with no shelter to be found. In such circumstances, Laurence would be forced to choose between ordering him to land, condemning him to a quicker death in hopes of sparing the lives of his men, or letting them all continue on the slow grinding road to destruction together: a horror beside which Laurence could contemplate death in battle with perfect equanimity.
“So then the sooner we go, the better, for having an easy crossing of it,” Granby argued. “August will be better than October for avoiding blizzards.”
“And for being roasted alive in the desert instead,” Riley said.
Granby rounded on him. “I don’t mean to say,” he said, with a smoldering look in his eye that belied his words, “that there is anything old-womanish in all these objections—”
> “For there is not, indeed,” Laurence broke in sharply. “You are quite right, Tom; the danger is not a question of blizzards in particular, but that we have not the first understanding of the difficulties particular to the journey. And that we must remedy, first, before we engage either to go or to wait.”
“If you offer the fellow money to guide you, of course he will say the road is safe,” Riley said. “And then just as likely leave you halfway to nowhere, with no recourse.”
Staunton also tried again to dissuade Laurence, when he came seeking Tharkay’s direction the next morning. “He occasionally brings us letters, and sometimes will do errands for the Company in India,” Staunton said. “His father was a gentleman, I believe a senior officer, and took some pains with his education; but still the man cannot be called reliable, for all the polish of his manners. His mother was a native woman, Thibetan or Nepalese, or something like; and he has spent the better part of his life in the wild places of the earth.”
“For my part, I should rather have a guide half-British than one who can scarcely make himself understood,” Granby said afterwards, as he and Laurence together picked their way along the backstreets of Macao; the late rains were still puddled in the gutters, a thin slick of green overlaid on the stagnating waste. “And if Tharkay were not so much a gypsy he wouldn’t be of any use to us; it is no good complaining about that.”
At length they found Tharkay’s temporary quarters: a wretched little two-story house in the Chinese quarter with a drooping roof, held up mostly by its neighbors to either side, all of them leaning against one another like drunken old men, with a landlord who scowled before leading them within, muttering.
Tharkay was sitting in the central court of the house, feeding the eagle gobbets of raw flesh from a dish; the fingers of his left hand were marked with white scars where the savage beak had cut him on previous feedings, and a few small scratches bled freely now, unheeded. “Yes, I came overland,” he said, to Laurence’s inquiry, “but I would not recommend you the same road, Captain; it is not a comfortable journey, when compared against sea travel.” He did not interrupt his task, but held up another strip of meat for the eagle, which snatched it out of his fingers, glaring at them furiously with the dangling bloody ends hanging from its beak as it swallowed.
It was difficult to know how to address him: neither a superior servant, nor a gentleman, nor a native, all his refinements of speech curiously placed against the scruff and tumble of his clothing and his disreputable surroundings; though perhaps he could have gotten no better accommodations, curious as his appearance was, and with the hostile eagle as his companion. He made no concessions, either, to his odd, in-between station; a certain degree of presumption almost in his manner, less formal than Laurence would himself have used to so new an acquaintance, almost in active defiance against being held at a servant’s distance.
But Tharkay answered their many questions readily enough, and having fed his eagle and set it aside, hooded, to sleep, he even opened up the kit which had carried him there so that they might inspect the vital equipment: a special sort of desert tent, fur-lined and with leather-reinforced holes spaced evenly along the edges, which he explained could be lashed quickly together with similar tents to form a single larger sheet to shield a camel, or in larger numbers a dragon, against sandstorm or hail or snow. There was also a snug leather-wrapped canteen, well-waxed to keep the water in, and a small tin cup tied on with string, marks engraved into it halfway and near the rim; a neat small compass, in a wooden case, and a thick journal full of little hand-sketched maps, and directions taken down in a small, neat hand.
All of it showed signs of use and good upkeep; plainly he knew what he was about, and he did not show himself over-eager, as Riley had feared, for their custom. “I had not thought of returning to Istanbul,” Tharkay said instead, when Laurence at last came around to inquiring if he would be their guide. “I have no real business there.”
“But have you any elsewhere?” Granby said. “We will have the devil of a time getting there without you, and you should be doing your country a service.”
“And you will be handsomely paid for your trouble,” Laurence added.
“Ah, well, in that case,” Tharkay said, a wry twist to his smile.
“Well, I only wish you may all not have your throats slit by Uygurs,” Riley said in deep pessimism, giving up, after he had tried once more at dinner to persuade them to remain. “You will dine with me on board tomorrow, Laurence?” he asked, stepping into his barge. “Very good. I will send over the raw leather, and the ship’s forge,” he called, his voice drifting back over the sound of the oars dipping into the water.
“I will not let anyone slit your throats at all,” Temeraire said, a little indignantly. “Although I would like to see an Uygur; is that a kind of dragon?”
“A kind of bird, I think,” Granby said; Laurence was doubtful, but he did not like to contradict when he was not sure himself.
“Tribesmen,” Tharkay said, the next morning.
“Oh.” Temeraire was a little disappointed; he had seen people before. “That is not very exciting, but perhaps they are very fierce?” he asked hopefully.
“Have you enough money to buy thirty camels?” Tharkay asked Laurence, after he had finally escaped a lengthy interrogation as to the many other prospective delights of their journey, such as violent sandstorms and frozen mountain passes.
“We are going by air,” Laurence said, confused. “Temeraire will carry us,” he added, wondering if Tharkay had perhaps misunderstood.
“As far as Dunhuang,” Tharkay said equably. “Then we will need to buy camels. A single camel can carry enough water for a day, for a dragon of his size; and then of course he can eat the camel.”
“Are such measures truly necessary?” Laurence said, in dismay at losing so much time: he had counted on crossing the desert quickly, on the wing. “Temeraire can cover better than a hundred miles in a day at need; surely we can find water over such an expanse.”
“Not in the Taklamakan,” Tharkay said. “The caravan routes are dying, and the cities die with them; the oases have mostly failed. We ought to be able to find enough for us and the camels, but even that will be brackish. Unless you are prepared to risk his dying of thirst, we carry our own water.”
This naturally putting a period to any further debate, Laurence was forced to apply to Sir George for some assistance in the matter, having had no expectation, on his departure from England, that his ready funds should need to stretch to accommodate thirty camels and supplies for an overland journey. “Nonsense, it is a trifle,” Staunton said, refusing his offered note of hand. “I dare say I will have cleared fifty thousand pounds in consequence of your mission, when all is said and done. I only wish I did not think I was speeding you on the way to your destruction. Laurence, forgive me for making so unpleasant a suggestion; I would not like to plant false suspicions in your head, but the possibility has been preying on me since you decided upon going. Could the letter by any chance have been forged?”
Laurence looked at him in surprise, and Staunton went on, “Recall that the orders, if honest, must have been written before news of your success here in China reached England—if indeed that news has reached them yet. Only consider the effect upon the negotiations so lately completed if you and Temeraire had unceremoniously gone away in the midst of them: you would have had to sneak out of the country like thieves to begin with, and an insult of such magnitude would surely have meant war. I am hard-pressed to imagine any reason the Ministry should have sent such orders.”
Laurence sent for the letter and for Granby; together they studied it fresh in the strong sunlight from the east-facing windows. “I am damned if I am any judge of such things, but it seems Lenton’s hand to me,” Granby said doubtfully, handing it back.
To Laurence also; the letters were slant and wavering, but this kind of affliction, he did not say to Staunton, was not uncommon; aviators were taken into service at the age
of seven, and the most promising among them often became runners by ten, with studies neglected sadly in favor of practical training: his own young cadets were inclined to grumble at his insistence that they should learn to write a graceful hand and practice their trigonometry.
“Who would bother with it, any road?” Granby said. “That French ambassador hanging about Peking, De Guignes—he left even before we did, and by now I expect he is halfway to France. Besides, he knows well enough that the negotiations are over.”
“There might be French agents less well-informed behind it,” Staunton said, “or worse, with knowledge of your recent success, trying to lure you into a trap. Brigands in the desert would hardly be above taking a bribe to attack you, and there is something too convenient in the arrival of this message, just when the Allegiance has been damaged, and you are sure to be chafing at your enforced delay.”
“Well, I make no secret I had as lief go myself, for all this nay-saying and gloom,” Granby said as they walked back to their residence: the crew had already begun the mad scramble of preparation, and haphazard bundles were beginning to be piled upon the beach. “So it may be dangerous; we are not nursemaids to a colicky baby, after all. Dragons are made to fly, and another nine months of this sitting about on deck and on shore will be the ruin of his fighting-edge.”
“And of half the boys, if they have not been spoilt already,” Laurence said grimly, observing the antics of the younger officers, who were not entirely reconciled to being so abruptly put back to work, and were engaging in more boisterous behavior than he liked to see from men on duty.