by Naomi Novik
Instead, Shipley pointed at the necklace and asked “Where?” in the version of the language which he knew, then pointing in each direction of the compass; the aborigines answered with “Pitjantjatjara” and “Larrakia,” and pointed north and west, with almost a throwing gesture and another word—“Far, far,” Shipley said. “I think that’s what it means, anyway.”
“And then what about the men they have been snatching?” O’Dea said, and drew in the sand several figures in stick form, and by them the water-hole and the rock outcropping where Jonas Green had vanished. He then crossed out one of his figures; the aborigines nodded without surprise and said, “Bunyip,” and shook their heads vigorously.
“Bunyip,” they repeated, and crossed the man out more thoroughly, and said a great deal more, which might have been excellent advice if they could have understood a word of it. But then, perceiving they were not understood, the youngest of their company proceeded to hold up his hands like claws by his mouth and made a hissing snatching gesture, with a growl, rather looking like a children’s bogey; and Laurence grew doubtful of the proffered explanation: there had certainly been no monsters wandering about the camp.
But O’Dea proved more willing to accept this excuse, and, somewhat mollified, trying more of his limited supply found a few more common words: he drew the egg larger and showed a dragon coming out of it, wings outspread. The aborigines repeated their gesture towards the north-west, and then the oldest tapped the youth on the shoulder, demanding attention, and opening his mouth sang, in a low and gravelly if resonant voice; the other men clapping softly along, to add rhythm to the chant.
“No use to trying to work that out,” O’Dea said, looking around. “They go off so from time to time, when you ask them directions, but it is only these stories of theirs: monsters and gods and the making of the world. It don’t mean anything.”
The song finishing, and the small smudgy fire also, the men bent to take up their strings of game and to move on to another patch of the grasslands; the youth stepped into the newly burnt section and took himself a branch still burning quietly at one end. Laurence would have liked to try and get a little more intelligence out of them, perhaps recruiting Dorset, who was a good hand at draftsmanship, and trying to with better illustrations convey more precise questions; but the hunters had evidently tired of a conversation of so little profit to themselves, and to restrain them could only provoke the quarrel which the men had formerly imagined.
“Bunyips,” O’Dea repeated to Shipley with ghoulish satisfaction, as they walked back towards the camp. “So it is bunyips: and they must be man-eaters, did you see how those black fellows shook at the word? God rest their souls, Jack Telly and poor Jonas; in a bunyip’s belly, it is a cruel way to end. Like tigers, they must be.”
The story would certainly be all across the camp in moments, when they had returned, and the men undoubtedly as pleased to transfer all their fears to man-eating monsters, as to native tribesmen; or more pleased, for the greater hideousness of the threat. Laurence sighed, and climbed wearily up the dune ahead to wave a reassuring hand to Temeraire, who should be worrying; but when he came in sight, Temeraire was looking down instead at the egg, which Fellowes was hastily taking out of its wrappings.
Chapter 10
“I WILL THANK YOU for an end to this wholly inappropriate interference, Mr. Laurence,” Rankin said, icily. “You have neither rank nor office, nor even proper training to recommend your opinion on the matter. Mr. Drewmore, I trust you are ready to stand the duty? Mr. Blincoln, I believe you are next in seniority, should Mr. Drewmore fail to secure the hatchling; you will prepare yourself as well.”
“Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Drewmore said after a moment, not displeased but only slow to grasp the offered advantage: a man of forty, heavy of body and of mind at once; he had shown not an iota of initiative, which Laurence had seen, and set himself apart only by a certain amiable willingness and basic competence. He had reached the rank of first lieutenant aboard a middle-weight, for no greater accomplishment than being the son of a distinguished and well-liked captain; but he had been grounded by the death of his beast, during the plague, and no equal post had been offered him.
And Blincoln, only a little second to him in both years and seniority, was similarly a nonentity; neither of them in any way worthy of the one, the last egg. Meanwhile Forthing, who alone among the aviators had distinguished himself in service, however meager his connections, was evidently to be set aside.
Laurence had grown up in a service where influence was very nearly all, in the way of promotion, but he had grown used to the very different mode in the Corps: if a man had much in the way of influence, he was not an aviator, as a rule. Rankin himself was an exception, and Laurence’s former lieutenant Ferris: the only two such cases Laurence had so far met, in the service. Merit, and the lucky opportunity of demonstrating it, had in practice by far the greater reach. Personal loyalties might have their impact, but Rankin did not know these men; they had not been affectionate towards him. He had met them one and all, not a month ago.
Laurence had known the gesture was a futile one; but he had spoken anyway. “Sir, you may not be aware that Captain Granby had other intentions,” he had said, quietly.
Rankin had rebuffed him in as offensive a way as possible, and without bothering to lower his voice; adding now, “I do not intend this covert should be conducted on the irregular and unsound lines of your own model of behavior.”
“By which I can only suppose you mean that Mr. Forthing is not of a line of aviators,” Laurence said.
“Your own example must be all that any man requires to appreciate the value of a trained, a trusted lineage: of men who understand what dragons are, and what their own duty is,” Rankin said.
Temeraire, who had been anxiously watching the egg so far, lifted his head here and said, “Well, if the egg should prefer Mr. Forthing, it may have him; and I will tell it so whether you like me to or not: I do not care whether he has a trusted lineage.”
Rankin wheeled to confront him, but meanwhile the egg was rocking; it cracked abruptly across its equator, or near enough, and all their attention was drawn over to it at once. Tipping over, it did not quite separate; with an evident effort, the broken upper half was slowly pushed forward over the sand, furrowing up the burnt patches, and the hatchling beast crawled laboriously out.
There was a brief, dismayed silence as it raised its head. It was a strange, misshapen creature, with none of the lithe, deadly grace that every other dragonet whom Laurence had ever seen had possessed instantly on cracking the shell. It was a long almost skeletal thing, uniformly mottled brown-grey, and bristling along all its shoulders and in patches over its back with spikes very like the barbs on the tails of the Chequered Nettle, one of which had produced the egg; it had, also, inherited the claws of its Parnassian sire, so long they bid fair to snag upon its own flesh.
Its wings were a little stubby and badly cramped together, draped loosely over the hatchling’s sides, but as it tried to stretch them out, those sides were revealed—distended into swollen folds which bulged out over the dragonet’s shoulder and hip-joints, as if its rib cage were shrunken in too small, and the hide too large for it.
Yet it was otherwise painfully thin to look upon, the bones of the shoulders and hip standing in sharp relief: long and narrow, and had been folded upon itself several times in the tight bounds of the shell. The dragonet had evidently suffered from the confinement, and moving palsied-slow unwound itself only a little at a time, and pausing every short while to gasp a few labored breaths. Laurence could only wince for its sake. It was scarcely the size of an underfed hound.
“Oh, I am hungry,” the dragonet said, in a small piping voice which sounded very much as though it were being whistled through a reed; but none of the aviators moved. Drewmore and Blincoln shifted uneasily, and looked at Forthing, who already had edged back away. They, too, stepped back, from the hatchling, and a general uneasy silence began.
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“Well,” Rankin said after a pause, “it is a pity. Gentlemen, I assume you are one and all in agreement? There is no officer who would care to try the harnessing? Mr. Dorset?”
Dorset was already pacing around the hatchling, inspecting it; he shook his head absently. “I cannot speak either to the source or the effects of the deformity until I have opened it, of course; from the labored breathing I should imagine the lungs are constrained. Quite an interesting case.”
No-one else spoke; Laurence did not immediately follow, until Rankin turned and said, “Mr. Fellowes, I believe you are our only ground-crew master; I must ask you to undertake the duty—I am afraid we do not have rifles. Would you prefer a sledge, or a pistol?”
Temeraire, Laurence thought, had also not yet understood; before he should realize, Laurence said sharply, “That is quite enough, sir; I wonder if you could have the temerity to call yourself a Christian. Mr. Fellowes, we will have none of that.”
Rankin wheeled on him and snapped, “That you are ignorant of all principles of the Corps, and disdain those few you know, is no surprise; that you have the audacity to set yourself up as authority likewise—What can you, who received the privilege unlooked-for and unearned, understand of the feelings of any aviator on such an occasion, who has lived all his life in waiting for it? It is our duty—as much our duty as harnessing the beast would be, if it were fit for service; it is not. It is not, and there is nothing to be done for it.”
“It is nonetheless one of God’s creatures for its lack of usefulness,” Laurence said, “and I will not see it murdered.”
“Would you prefer to see it abandoned and exposed, to suffer slowly?” Rankin said. “A dragon comes out of the shell ready to fend for itself: do you imagine this hatchling could do so, if we should leave it here, unharnessed and alone?”
The dragonet, as yet mostly preoccupied with untangling itself, looked back at them wary and uncertain. Fumbling its long-clawed feet over one another and its tail, it tried to spread out its wings, and managed to flap and raise a little dust; but then it ceased the effort, and fell to gasping instead.
“Oh,” Temeraire said sadly, to the hatchling, “you cannot fly?”
“I am sure I will manage it shortly,” the hatchling said, in its small pale voice, “only I am so stiff; and hungry.”
Rankin jerked his hand cuttingly. “It cannot live long in any case,” he said.
“Then,” Laurence said, “we will give the poor beast some food, and what comfort it can take, until the natural end should come; if that be quick or late, that does not relieve us of the obligations of humanity.”
“And who do you propose should feed it?” Rankin said. “No aviator will do it and so bind himself, sacrificing his one chance; and I will be damned if I will allow you to impose a low convict upon us with a claim to call himself Captain—”
“I will feed it myself,” Laurence said.
“What?” Temeraire said, his head swinging around sharply. Laurence paused, astonished, and Temeraire said, “You would—?” and his voice was trembling, thrumming with distress and wrath, an edge of the resonance of the divine wind to it.
“Have done,” Rankin said, impatiently. “You cannot feed it; unless it has no sense at all, it will not take food from your hands: it can see you are Temeraire’s, and it knows he would kill it at once. Which,” he added, “would save us the difficulty, I suppose.”
Laurence threw him a disgusted look; Temeraire might perhaps dislike the gesture, but as for murdering a small and helpless hatchling, he did not in the least believe it. He said, “Temeraire—my dear, what is this absurdity; you cannot imagine I would propose any substitution, ever.” That Temeraire was distressed, however, was certain; Laurence added, “My intentions are only the most practical: and I beg you to feed the hatchling yourself, if you should have any objection to my performing the office.”
“Oh,” Temeraire said, his ruff smoothing a little. “Oh, well; I do not mind that, but, Laurence—” He leaned his head over and in a low and confiding tone said, rather hesitantly, “Laurence, maybe you have not quite understood—it cannot fly.”
Laurence was very much shocked—shocked, appalled; he scarcely knew what to say. Rankin said, “There; will this convince you to have done enacting us this thorough Cheltenham tragedy?”
Temeraire snorted at Rankin. “I am sure I do not see why you must speak if all you wish is to be unpleasant,” he said, “and Laurence, if you should feel very strongly, of course I will give the hatchling some food. Only, it does seem a little strange.”
“More than a little strange,” Caesar said. “Why, what’s it to do when you aren’t about, and it is hungry? Anyway, we are still in this desert, and it has been scraps and string all week; there may be a bit of extra food about now, but it’s a long way back to the cows. You might have a little sense, instead of wasting it.”
“Perhaps it might come to be able to fly, after all,” Temeraire said, “if it is only tired, from being shaken a great deal—although—then it might have stayed in the shell to rest—”
He trailed off, not very convincingly; and Laurence found himself abruptly unsure—adrift; what he had supposed a certain mooring had shifted, and was floating with him in an unknown current. If the hatchling should linger—deformed, helpless, without any means of sufficiency—rejected by the Corps, and its fellows also—
“Temeraire, you will oblige me greatly if you would give it something,” Laurence said, nevertheless; there was no alternative which did not appall the worse: which was not full of barbarism and cruelty, and must be rejected out of hand.
He turned, and stopped: the hatchling was feasting slowly but with great determination in the gutted innards of the kangaroo, with a loop of belt around its neck for token harness, and Demane looked up and said, “I am naming him Kulingile.”
“It means, ‘all is well,’” Temeraire said to Caesar, “and I do not see what business you have complaining, when Demane was of my crew. I do not see why I must always be losing some one of my officers or my ground crew whenever an egg should happen to hatch; it is become quite unreasonable.”
And almost enough to make one not wish to go and find the other egg: a certain anticipation of injury which made Temeraire feel not so delighted as he ordinarily would have been, with the intelligence which Laurence and Tharkay had brought back from the natives.
Not really, of course; it was not the fault of the egg, and in truth Temeraire was deeply, profoundly relieved, even to have the little scraps of direction; but—he might admit he was not quite feeling himself. He would not have minded a few days more of quiet rest, and stewed meat. Temeraire did not mean to complain aloud, but his throat was so very uncomfortable, and it seemed very hard he should have to go to all this trouble, and suffer indignities, only to be robbed of yet another crewman. He sighed.
“I beg your pardon; he is an officer,” Laurence was saying to Rankin, “and not merely a personal servant: Demane has been rated nearly two years, and served as acting-captain on Arkady—”
“A feral beast, which could not be controlled in any case,” Rankin said, dismissively. “No; if you imagine I will submit this to the Admiralty, you are thoroughly mistaken. Your servant has made a pet of the creature, and so far as I am concerned, they neither of them have anything to do with the Corps at all; he is welcome to ship back to England if you imagine he will fare better with recognition there. Not that the beast will survive long enough to make that necessary.”
“Only long enough to eat up the best of everything,” Caesar said, disapprovingly; and Temeraire did think the hatchling was being excessive. Kulingile did not eat very quickly, but he had not stopped eating since he had begun, and was now nearly inside the carcass.
“The kangaroo is bigger than you are,” he said, “and you seem to be eating all of it; you might leave some for tomorrow.”
Kulingile pulled his head out of the kangaroo, having torn free another fresh gobbet of meat, and tipped
back to swallow down the lump, which traveled as a visible knot down his skinny throat. He panted a few times afterwards, his very peculiar-looking sides heaving out and in, and then said thin and piping, “But I am still hungry now, and my captain fetched it for me, so it is mine, and I will eat it; I will,” and he pushed his head back inside.
Temeraire sighed, and supposed he could not be mean enough to grudge the hatchling its meal; it must, he thought, be very distressing not to be able to fly. He looked at it critically: it was those sides, so queerly bulging and heaped on one another, he thought, which were likely the problem. “I do not suppose you might cut a bit of them out, and sew it up again,” he suggested to Dorset, who was sitting cross-legged by the hatchling’s side and listening to the chest with his ear-trumpet.
“A little quiet if you please,” Dorset said absently, “and it would be of the greatest use imaginable if he would stop eating,” he added to Demane, “—the digestive processes are drowning out the action of the pneumotic system.”
“He will sleep when he isn’t hungry anymore,” Demane said, a possessive hand still on the dragonet’s neck, stroking. He looked over at Roland with a rather triumphant expression, which faded when she turned her back and with a set face went to the other side of the camp, to busy herself with packing away the gear for their departure.
“I didn’t think you would be so jealous,” he said to her, when the dragonet had gone to sleep a little later.
“Yes, very jealous,” Roland said without turning, “you ass: I will be taking Excidium in seven years or so, when Mother is ready to be grounded.” Temeraire silently swelled with indignation, overhearing this.
“Then—” Demane said, and she rounded on him, and said, “What business have you, dragging it out for the poor thing and everyone, only to make a show of yourself? Half these fellows are grounded because their beasts died, d’you think anyone likes it, watching it fight just to get its breath? It’ll outgrow its lungs in a week—”