Black Powder War t-3

by Naomi Novik

  “On that subject, sir—” Laurence said, angry at this bald-faced attempt at pressure; and then swallowed the words which leapt to his tongue: such as a pointed remark that Mustafa had been quick enough to come at once on this occasion, though previous entreaties had found him so occupied he could not spare a moment.

  Instead he controlled himself, and said after a moment, “Sir, I think perhaps your guard may have from zeal thought more transpired than did in fact occur; I dare say my officers did not see the women at all, but only were calling in hopes of catching sight of them. That is a great folly; and you may be sure,” he added, with heavy emphasis, “that they will suffer punishment for it; but to hand them over to death for it, I will not do, not on the word of a witness who has every cause to accuse them of doing rather more than less than they did, from a natural desire of protecting his charges from insult.”

  Mustafa, frowning, appeared ready to dispute further; Laurence added, “If they had outraged the virtue of any of the women, I would without hesitation deal with them according to your notion of justice; but so uncertain a circumstance, with a single witness to speak against them, must argue for a degree of mercy.”

  He did not move his hand to the hilt of his sword, nor signal to his men; but as best he could without turning his head, he considered their positions, and the disposal of their baggage, most of which had been stowed away inside the kiosques; if the Turks wished to seize Dunne and Hackley by force, he should have to order the men aboard directly, and leave all behind: if half-a-dozen dragons got into the air before Temeraire was aloft, it would be all up with them.

  “Mercy is a great virtue,” Mustafa said finally, “and indeed it would be sorrowful to mar relations between our countries by unhappy and false accusations. I am sure,” he added, looking at Laurence significantly, “that you would grant an equal presentiment of innocence in any reverse case.”

  Laurence pressed his lips together. “You may rely upon it,” he said, through his teeth, well aware he had committed himself to at least tolerate the inadequacies of the Turkish explanations so long as he had no proof of the reverse. But there was very little choice; he would not see two young officers under his care put to death for kissing their hands to a handful of girls through a window, dearly as he would have liked to wring their necks.

  Mustafa’s mouth turned up at the corner, and he inclined his head. “I believe we understand one another, Captain; we will leave their correction to you, then, and I trust you will ensure no similar incident occurs: gentleness shown once is mercy, shown twice is folly.”

  He collected the guards and led them away into the grounds, not without some low and angry protest on their part; there were some sighs of relief as they at last reluctantly went out of sight, and a couple of the other riflemen went so far as to clap Dunne and Hackley on the back: behavior which had at once to be stopped. “That will be enough,” Laurence said dangerously. “Mr. Granby, you will note for the log that Mr. Dunne and Mr. Hackley are turned out of the flight crew, and you will put their names in the ground-crew roll.”

  Laurence had no very good idea whether an aviator might so be turned before the mast, as it were; but his expression did not allow of argument, and he did not receive any, only Granby’s quiet, “Yes, sir.” A harsh sentence, and it would look ugly upon their records even after they had been restored to their positions, as Laurence meant to do once they had learned a lesson. But he had little other choice, if they were to be punished; he could call no court-martial here, so far from home, and they were too old to be started with a cane. “Mr. Pratt, take these men in irons; Mr. Fellowes, I trust our supply of leather will allow you to prepare a lash.”

  “Aye, sir,” Fellowes said, clearing his throat uncomfortably.

  “But Laurence, Laurence,” Temeraire said into complete silence, the only one who would have dared intercede. “Mustafa and those guards have gone, you need not flog Dunne and Hackley now—”

  “They deserted their posts and willfully risked all the success of our enterprise, all for the satisfaction of the most base and carnal impulses,” Laurence said flatly. “No; do not speak further in their defense, Temeraire: any court-martial would hang them for it, and high spirits make no excuse; they knew better.”

  He saw with some grim approval the young men flinching, and nodded shortly. “Who was on guard when they left?” he asked, surveying the rest of the crew.

  Eyes dropped all around; then young Salyer stepped forward and said, “I was, sir,” in a trembling voice, which cracked mid-word.

  “Did you see them go?” Laurence asked quietly.

  “Yes, sir,” Salyer whispered.

  “Sir,” Dunne said hurriedly, “sir, we told him to keep quiet, that it was only for a lark—”

  “That will be quite enough, Mr. Dunne,” Granby said.

  Salyer himself did not make excuses; and he was indeed a boy, only lately made midwingman, though tall and gangly with his adolescent growth. “Mr. Salyer, as you cannot be trusted to keep watch, you are reduced to ensign,” Laurence said. “Go and cut a switch from one of those trees, and go to my quarters.” Salyer stumbled away hiding his face, which beneath his hand was blotchy red.

  To Dunne and Hackley, Laurence turned and said, “Fifty lashes each; and you may call yourselves damned lucky. Mr. Granby, we will assemble in the garden for punishment at the stroke of eleven; see to it the bell is rung.”

  He went to his kiosque, and when Salyer came gave him ten strokes; it was a paltry count, but the boy had foolishly cut the switch from springy green wood, far more painful and more like to cut the skin, and the boy would be humiliated if he was driven to weeping. “That will do; see you do not forget this,” Laurence said, and sent him away, before the trembling gasps had broken into tears.

  Then he drew out his best clothes; he still had no better coat than the Chinese garment, but he set Emily to polish his boots fresh, and Dyer to press his neckcloth, while he went out and shaved himself over the small hand-basin. He put on his dress-sword and his best hat, then went out again and found the rest of the crew assembling in their Sunday clothing, and makeshift frames of bare signal-flag shafts thrust deep into the ground. Temeraire hovered anxiously, shifting his weight from side to side, and plowing up the earth.

  “I am sorry to ask it of you, Mr. Pratt, but it must be done,” Laurence said to the armorer quietly, and Pratt with his big head hung low between his shoulders nodded once. “I will keep the count myself, do you not count aloud.”

  “Yes, sir,” Pratt said.

  The sun crept a little higher. All the crew were already assembled and waiting and had been ten minutes and more; but Laurence neither spoke nor moved until Granby cleared his throat and said, “Mr. Digby, ring the bell for eleven, if you please,” with great formality; and the eleven strokes tolled away, if softly.

  Stripped to the waist and in their oldest breeches, Dunne and Hackley were led up to the poles; they at least did not disgrace themselves, but silently put their shaking hands up to be tied. Pratt was standing unhappily, ten paces back, running the long strap of the whip through his hands, folding it upon itself every few inches. It looked like an old scrap of harness, hopefully softened by use and much of the thickness worn away; better at any rate than new leather.

  “Very well,” Laurence said; a terrible silence fell, broken only by the crack of the descending lash, the gasps and cries growing slowly fainter, the count going on and on with their bodies slackening in the frames, hanging heavy from their wrists and dripping thin trickles of blood. Temeraire keened unhappily and put his head under his wing.

  “I make that fifty, Mr. Pratt,” Laurence said; nearer to forty if even so far, but he doubted any of his men had been counting very closely, and he was sick to his heart of the business. He had rarely ordered floggings of more than a dozen strokes, even as a naval captain, and the practice was entirely less common among aviators. For all the gravity of the offense, Dunne and Hackley were still very young; and
he blamed himself in no small part that they should have come to run so wild.

  Still it had to be done; they had known better, much better, and been reined in scarcely days before; so flagrant a breach, left unchecked, would have wholly ruined them. Granby had not been so far off, in Macao, to worry about the effect of their long travels on the young officers; the long idleness of their sea-journey followed by their more recent excess of adventure was no substitute for the steady pressure of ordinary day-to-day discipline, in a covert; it was not enough for a soldier to be brave. Laurence was not sorry to see a strong impression from the punishment on the faces of the other officers, particularly the young men, that at least this small good might come of the unhappy incident.

  Dunne and Hackley were cut down, and carried not unkindly back up to the larger kiosque, and laid in a screened-off corner upon a pair of cots which Keynes had prepared; they lay on their faces still gasping softly in half-consciousness, while he with a tight mouth sopped away the blood from their backs, and gave them each a quarter-glass of laudanum to drink.

  “How do they do?” Laurence asked the dragon-surgeon, later in the evening; they had fallen quiet after the drug, and lain still.

  “Well enough,” Keynes said shortly. “I am grown used to having them as patients; they had only just risen from their sickbeds—”

  “Mr. Keynes,” Laurence said quietly.

  Keynes looking up at his face fell silent, and turned his attention back to the wounded men. “They are inclined to be a little feverish, but that is nothing wonderful. They are young and strong, the bleeding has stopped nicely; they ought to be on their feet by morning, for a little while in any case.”

  “Very good,” Laurence said, and turned away to find Tharkay standing before him, in the low circle of the candle-light, looking at Dunne and Hackley where they lay; their striped backs were bare, and the weals bright red and purpling along the edges.

  Laurence stared, drew in a sharp breath, then with controlled fury said, “Well, sir, and do you return? I wonder you should show your face here again.”

  Tharkay said, “I hope my absence has not been too great an inconvenience,” with calm impudence.

  “Only of too short duration,” Laurence said. “Take your money and your things and get out of my sight, and I wish you may go to the devil.”

  “Well,” Tharkay said, after a moment, “if you have no further need of my services, I suppose I may as well be on my way; I will give Mr. Maden your apologies, then, and indeed I ought not to have committed you.”

  “Who is Mr. Maden?” Laurence said, frowning; the name was distantly familiar, and then he slowly reached into his coat and drew out the letter which had come to them in Macao all those long months ago, which Tharkay had brought to him: flaps still marked with seals, and one of those marked with a solid M. “You are speaking of the gentleman who engaged you to bring us our orders?” he asked sharply.

  “I am,” Tharkay said. “He is a banker here in the city, and Mr. Arbuthnot desired him to find a reliable messenger for the letter; alas, only I was to be had.” There was a little mocking quality to his voice. “He invites you to dine; will you come?”

  Chapter 8

  “NOW,” THARKAY SAID, soft, soft, they were at the palace wall, and the night-guards had just gone past; he flung a grappling-line, and they scrambled up and over: no great trick for a sailor, the stone wall ragged-faced and generous with footholds. In the outer gardens, pleasure-pavilions stood overlooking the sea, and a single great towering column loomed up against the half-moon while they ran across the lawns; then they were safely across the open ground and into the thickets left wild upon the hillside, ivy blanketing scraps of old, old ruins, arches built of brick and columns tumbled onto their sides.

  They had another wall to scramble over, but this one, traveling as it did all around the circumference of the vast grounds, was too long to be well-patrolled; then they made their way down to the shores of the Golden Horn, where Tharkay calling softly roused a ferryman to carry them across the span in his little damp boat. The tributary glimmered to match its name even in the darkness, reflections stretching long from window-light and boat lanterns on both of its banks, people taking the air on balconies and terraces, and the sound of music carrying easily over the water.

  Laurence would have liked to stop and look over the harbor for some closer detail of the works he had seen the previous day, but Tharkay led him on without a pause away from the dockyards and into the streets, not in the same direction as the embassy, but towards the ancient spire of Galata Tower, standing sentinel upon the hill. A low wall encircled the district around the watch-tower, soft and crumbling and very old, unattended; inside the streets were much quieter; only a handful of coffeehouses owned by Greeks or Italians still lit, small handfuls of men at tables talking in low voices over cups of the sweet-smelling apple tea, and here and there a devoted hookah-smoker gazing out upon the street while the fragrant steam emitted in slow, thin trails from between his lips.

  Avraam Maden’s house was handsome, wider by twice than its nearest neighbors and framed by broad-spreading trees, established on an avenue with a clear prospect on the old tower. A maid welcomed them, and within were all the signs of prosperity and long residence: carpets old but rich and still bright; portraits upon the walls in gilt frames, of dark-eyed men and women: rather more Spanish than Turkish in character, Laurence would have said.

  Maden poured them wine as the maid laid out a platter of thin bread with a dish of paste made from aubergines, very piquant, and another of sweet raisins and dates chopped together with nuts, flavored with red wine. “My family came from Seville,” he said, when Laurence mentioned the portraits, “when the King and the Inquisition expelled us; the Sultan was kinder to us.”

  Laurence hoped he might not have a very dismal meal ahead of him, having some vague impression of restrictions upon the Jewish diet, but the late dinner was more than respectable: a very good leg of lamb, roasted to a turn in the Turkish manner and carved off the spit into thin slices, with new potatoes dressed in their skins and a fragrant glaze of olive oil and strong herbs; and besides a whole fish roasted with peppers and tomatoes, pungent and strongly flavored with the common yellow spice, and a tenderly stewed fowl which no one could have objected to.

  Maden, who in his trade often served as a factor for British visitors, spoke excellent English, and his family also; they sat to table five, Maden’s two sons being already established in their own homes; besides his wife only his daughter Sara remained at home, a young woman well out of the schoolroom: not yet thirty but old to be unmarried with so good a dowry as Maden seemed able to provide, and her looks and manner were pleasing if in a foreign mode, dark hair and brows striking against fair skin, very like her elegant mother. Seated opposite the guests, she from either modesty or shyness kept her eyes lowered, though she spoke easily enough when addressed, in a self-possessed manner.

  Laurence did not broach his urgent inquiries himself, feeling it a species of rudeness, but rather fell back on a description of their journey westward, prompted by his hosts’ inquiries; these were polite to begin with, but soon began to be truly curious. Laurence had been raised to consider it a gentleman’s duty to make good dinner conversation, and their passage had furnished him with material enough for anecdotes to make it very little burden in the present case. With the ladies present, he made somewhat light of the worst dangers of the sandstorm and the avalanche, and did not speak of their encounter with the horsemen-raiders, but there was interest enough without it.

  “And then the wretches lighted on the cattle and were off again without a by-your-leave,” he said, finishing ruefully with the account of the ferals’ mortifying performance at the city gates, “with that villain Arkady wagging his head at us as he went, and all of us left at a standstill, our mouths hanging open. They went back well-pleased with themselves, I am sure, and as for us, it is of all things wonderful we were not thrown into prison.”

&
nbsp; “A cold welcome for you after a difficult road,” Maden said, amused.

  “Yes, a very difficult road,” Sara Maden said in her quiet voice, without looking up. “I am glad you all came through in safety.”

  There was a brief pause in the conversation; then Maden reached out and handed to Laurence the bread-platter, saying, “Well, I hope you are comfortable enough now; at least in the palace you must not be subjected to all this noise we have.”

  He was referring to the construction in the harbor, evidently a source of much aggrievance. “Who can get anything done with those great beasts overhead?” Mrs. Maden said, shaking her head. “Such a noise they make, and if they were to drop one of those cannon? Terrible creatures; I wish they were not let into civilized places. Not to speak of your dragon, of course, Captain; I am sure he is beautifully behaved,” she said hastily, catching herself, and speaking apologetically to Laurence, with some confusion.

  “I suppose we sound to you complainers over nothing, Captain,” Maden said, coming to her rescue, “when you daily must tend to them at close quarters.”

  “No, sir,” Laurence said, “indeed I found it wonderful to see a flight of dragons in the middle of the city here; we are not permitted to come so near to settled places, in England, and must follow particular courses to navigate overhead in the cities, that we do not distress the populace or the cattle, and even then there is always something of a noise made about our movements. Temeraire has often found it a burdensome stricture. Then is it a new sort of arrangement?”

  “Of course,” Mrs. Maden said. “I never heard of such a thing before, and I hope I never do again when it is over with. Not a word of warning, either; they appeared one morning as soon as the call to prayer was over; and we were left quaking in our houses all the day.”

  “One grows accustomed,” Maden said, with a philosophical shrug. “It has been a little slow the last two weeks, but the stores are opening again, dragons or no.”