Tongues of Serpents t-6

by Naomi Novik

  Chukwah leaned over the table and said, “Davey, you can tell that fellow, if you like, the Iroquois hatched thirty-two in New York alone this last year, so if these African fellows come to us looking for a fight, they can have one; and so can anyone else who likes, I expect.

  “I’ve surprised you, I guess,” he said with some perhaps pardonable complacency, looking at Granby, who had nearly choked upon the prawn which he was eating; all the other aviators at the table had brought their heads up from the profound attraction of their plates and cups. “Yes, the chiefs have come around to proper cattle farming, and it is working pretty well. I am thinking of jumping ship for it myself: they have more dragons than men to work them these days. A steady man, who doesn’t get the jitters or lose his head aloft, can have a beast of his own in three years.”

  To punctuate this remark, Ensign Widener dropped his chopsticks entirely into his bowl, splattering himself shamefully.

  “My brother says it is the course of the future,” Chukwah continued. “What does it matter if you can’t ship more than a ton, when you can get it from Boston to Charlotte in a week, hail, sleet, or storm? I am taking this load straight to Californiay, myself, to see if the Chumash riders will carry it over the Rockies for a share: and if they will, no bother with the Horn for us.”

  As deeply interesting as the development of the American aerial shipping should naturally be to himself and to every other aviator, Laurence was preoccupied and yet again baffled where Chukwah meant to get sufficient cargo to justify his making so obscure a voyage, and not only him but every other captain present.

  He was on the point of speaking to inquire, when Temeraire leaned over and whispered, “Laurence, as we are nearly at the end, it would be very courteous if you were now to offer a toast yourself, and I have thought of a few remarks, if you should wish to make them.” These Laurence had to parrot without comprehension; what little he might have understood, the liquor haze had by now consumed. They were received with utmost politeness and applause, but as he was mortally certain the same would have been true if he had inadvertently insulted the families of all the attendees, he took no great comfort here.

  The toast completed, and the wreckage of the meal beginning to be removed, Jia Zhen rose—himself not a little wavery—and invited them to recline in more comfort upon makeshift couches which had been arranged along the wall of the courtyard; the tables were pulled apart and lifted and carried out, to open more room within the court, and the lights were put out. In the absence of the moon, the night was very dark, and the jetty was lined with red lanterns that glowed brilliantly both in their own right and as reflections upon the water.

  A peculiar sound began: down upon the sand, one of the Larrakia men was sitting with some sort of an instrument, an enormously long pipe it seemed, which produced a deep, low, droning noise that resounded ceaselessly; he somehow did not pause even for breath. Two of the younger Chinese attendants were now standing at the jetty’s end, holding long poles with lanterns at the ends, which they dangled over the water; a crowd of the younger Larrakia men were waiting upon it.

  The company had grown quiet, muffled by the steady droning of the instrument and a sense of anticipation; no longer restricted to their seats, the guests gravitated towards the society of those with whom they could converse, but voices remained low. The tide was lapping in swiftly, high upon the shore, and the waves slapped at the jetty audibly.

  “I suppose they might be showing a path to land,” Temeraire said, peering up vainly into the night sky, but then the instrument ceased; in the sudden stillness, a low churning gurgle might be heard, traveling up the slope towards them from the bay, and the illuminated waters about the jetty shivered suddenly with many colors: gold and crimson and blue, rising up, and the great lamp-eyed head of a sea-serpent broke the surface and rose up and up, water streaming from its fins and in rivulets from the knotted brown seaweed which throttled its neck, like heaped strings of pearls.

  There was a smattering of applause from the guests, a murmur of appreciation; although one of the Dutchmen said to one of the Macassan captains, in French, “I don’t care; it makes any sailor’s blood run cold to see one, or he is a liar.”

  The men on the jetty were heaving a tunny into the serpent’s waiting, opened jaws; it closed its mouth and swallowed with evident pleasure, and they reached for its sides: beneath the seaweed lay chains, running through a network of golden rings piercing the serpent’s fins and sides, and forming a mesh. The ends of these strands were now being drawn up onto the jetty, a heap of untarnished net, and being wound upon the capstan which Laurence had seen before.

  Twenty men put hands to the capstan bars, and heaving together were bringing up a chest: carved of wood in a stretched egg-shape and banded with more of the gold, the size perhaps of the water-tank of a first rate; when it had breached the surface, another party of men set pulley hooks in it, and with a great effort it was swung up and onto the shore. The sea-serpent, watching, was fed another tunny; a second chest was drawn up, and then a third, of equal size, with the same maneuver.

  The netting was flung back off into the water. Trailing it behind like a skirt of gauze, the serpent turned away and plunging into the water swam to the far side of the bay: a pair of yellow lights gleamed and a bell was ringing from another distant jetty which Laurence had not formerly noticed. As the serpent cleared away, the great head vanishing into ripples and froth, the red lanterns were lowered again to dangle above the water; all fell silent once more, and yet another serpent broke out of the water, blinking slow, garlanded with gold and gleaming kelp.

  Chapter 15

  THE SERPENTS WERE HAVING a frolic in the sunlight, out past the edge of the harbor and where the water was dark and deeper; one could see them even from the shore as their shining curves breached the waves and plunged again, glittering with scales and their golden nets. There were a great many of them, thirty perhaps, although they were difficult to count and would not stop to even try and talk, when Temeraire had flown over to speak with them.

  “They do not seem to care for anything but fish and swimming,” he said, landing again discouraged at the pavilion.

  “I don’t see what else you expected,” Caesar said. “My captain says they are a menace to shipping, and they will get themselves caught in fishing nets and break them, which oughtn’t be hard to miss if they were not very dull fellows.”

  The pavilion was now the scene of many and intense negotiations, among the various captains and Jia Zhen as well as his lesser officials, who it seemed were responsible for working out the various arrangements, and then presenting them for his final approval. The rows and rows of containers upon the shore had been opened up for inspection, very like, Temeraire thought wistfully, heaps of splendid gifts arrayed for one’s delight. It was a little saddening to think they should all very shortly be going away, and one might not keep any of them, although he was well aware this could only be classed as rampant greed when he had already come out of their visit with so much good fortune. No-one, he felt, could deny that Laurence had been by far the most gorgeously arrayed of anyone present, the evening before, and the exquisite robes, at Temeraire’s suggestion—he did not find that Laurence was quite so careful of his clothing anymore as one might really wish—had now been packed away in oilcloth and in some scraps of silk, and were in a box among Temeraire’s own things, safe and protected.

  He would have even been very happy to possess one of the sea-boxes quite empty, and had sniffed them over several times to make a note of their design. They were so very ingeniously crafted that they had scarcely leaked, all the long way from China: on both top and bottom, a sequence of long wooden lips and trenches interlocked with one another, and these had been lined with pale creamy beeswax. It was indeed quite a struggle to open them at all: Temeraire had been only too pleased to oblige with a little assistance, and even he had found it hard going to work his talon-tips into the notches and lever the two halves apart.


  Some few seals had failed, but only perhaps three of the lot, and two of these contained porcelain which was only dampened and not spoilt. Although it made for tedious work to take out each piece and inspect it and dry it again, Temeraire could not be sorry in the least, as he and Iskierka and Caesar and Kulingile and Tharunka might all sit at the edge of the pavilion and watch each lovely glowing piece come out, to be wiped and set out upon cloths upon the mowed grassy verge, in the sunlight, and there were hundreds and hundreds of the pieces to be seen.

  They were crowded, though, and at first they were distracted by a little squabbling among the little dragons: Caesar was still the largest of those three, but Kulingile had eaten nearly four times as much last night, with all that Caesar had been able to do, and was not so very far off; and Tharunka, who of course was still very small, had the very reasonable contention that as this was in her country, the pavilion was more nearly hers than anyone else’s, and so she ought have the best place.

  “I do not see why you must all make such a fuss,” Iskierka said impatiently, “and look, they are bringing out some platters: that one could hold an entire cow.”

  “Oh, oh; how marvelous,” Temeraire cried: it was painted with a great phoenix, in yellow and green; of course it would have been the very pity of the world if it had been hurt in any way, but Temeraire did wonder if, perhaps, the salt water had faded the color a little, whether they might decide it could not be sold after all, and they might as well put it aside. “That is enough,” he added to the squabbling, turning his head, “Tharunka, you shall come and sit between Iskierka and me, up on the steps, and Kulingile, you may sit upon me: if you are not floating anymore—”

  “—which I am very glad to see,” Iskierka put in, “as it is not reasonable, and looks very strange.”

  “—even if you are not floating, anyway you are still very light; one would hardly know you were there,” Temeraire finished. “And there is no reason, Caesar, why you cannot fit on Iskierka’s other side, if I should turn myself a little so Kulingile can see, and then Iskierka sit straight back; but I must say it is time you gave over pretending Kulingile is not going to be bigger.”

  Harmony thus re-established, they might all enjoy the remainder of the spectacle as it unfolded before them: there were even some plates which had gold upon their rims, so they flashed in the sunlight, and Temeraire did not even mind Iskierka sighing damply; it was impossible to blame her.

  “I should like a whole set,” she said, “and I should eat off them every day.”

  “It doesn’t seem to me that it is proper to get anything like that dirty,” Tharunka said, and Temeraire was of her mind, but Iskierka pointed out that the plate would be clean at first, and when one had finished eating one’s food it would be cleaned again, so one would have all the pleasure of seeing it cleaned fresh every day, and also of having it uncovered little by little as you ate.

  This seemed almost excessively sybaritic, Temeraire thought, but after all, it was true the plates were intended for the purpose, and one ought to use them so, if one were careful not to let them be broken.

  At last the plates were all dry, and packed away again, this time in an ordinary crate: they were going to Holland, it seemed, or at least the Dutch captain was taking them away after some intense conversation with one of the officials, who consulted his records and shook his head a few times, and then at last reached a bargain: one of the chests which had been kept under lock and key in the pavilion was opened up, and oh, it was full to the brim of bars of gold, of which ten were carefully counted out, and then each separately wrapped by the officials in paper; another, with an ink-pot and a brush, wrote upon them in large characters.

  “What does that say?” Iskierka said, craning, quite to no purpose, as she could not read a word even of English.

  “It is a name,” Temeraire said, squinting a little. “It says, the house of Jing Du, who I suppose is a merchant, and that this is the third of ten bars, in payment for the shipment of five hundred pieces of porcelain,” and the bars were carefully wrapped again in oilcloth, over and over, and set back into one of the other containers: he supposed those would be returned to China.

  Mostly the remaining porcelain was not unwrapped, to all their disappointment; each piece was taken out wrapped in paper and shaken a little, and if no pieces came out they were put away into the new crates; a few did drop some shards, and were opened up, and whichever piece had broken was put aside and marked down upon the accounts; but it was more melancholy than satisfying to only see the ones which were smashed.

  One of the flawed containers, alas, had contained great bolts of silk; the leak had penetrated also into the oilcloth wrappings and stained several of these wholly beyond repair, and Temeraire bowed his neck in wincing sorrow when they were lifted out and unrolled in the sunlight: great sprawling white-crusted splotches all over the pale-spring green and deep crimson bolts. But the officials only shrugged, philosophically, and put them aside in a heap with the rest of the ruined goods; a note was written and wrapped in oilcloth, to be set with the rest of the payments.

  As the morning advanced, the speed of the exchanges began to increase; the rest of the goods came out swiftly, were repacked, and one after another rowed out to the waiting vessels, where the crews loaded them aboard as more and more payments went into the waiting container. Before the sun had reached its zenith, the smaller of the ships were leaving: the Macassan fishermen singing as they put their backs into their rowing and loading the dugout canoes back onto the praus. Their small white sails went up as they drove past the sea-serpents and vanished into clouds upon the ocean, sculling away.

  As the other containers were emptied of their deliveries, many of the goods which had been left and unloaded over the past week were now transferred within, in their place: the heaps of trepang now dried and smoked; the sweetly fragrant ripe fruit, each bundled separate into a little wrapping of paper—

  “They mean to ship fruit?” Laurence said, doubtfully; he had come to watch.

  Temeraire inquired of one of the officials, who had come hurrying inside for a fresh pot of ink. “Yes,” the young man said, “the deep water keeps it cold, and only half of it will spoil. Of course it is all for the Imperial court. Six silver,” he added, when Temeraire asked the cost of a piece.

  “Good God,” Laurence said, comprehensively, and Temeraire had to feel that for his own part, he should have rather had six silver coins than one piece of fruit, which might as easily be spoilt as not, and in any case would not even make a bite. “But,” he said wistfully, thinking of the great treasure-chambers at the Emperor’s court, which his mother had shown him on their visit, “perhaps if one has so very many silver coins that one cannot look at them all and enjoy them, one might rather have a piece of fruit; and then one might eat it and think, that is the taste of six silver coins.”

  One entire container, one of the newest judging by the color of the outer wood not yet as stained by the ocean waters, was thoroughly lined with oilcloth, and into this were laid bundles upon bundles of furs from the American ship: they were not gold, or brilliantly colored, so Temeraire found it a little peculiar that so much care should be taken with them, but when one of the bundles was spread out, it did glow very richly in the sunlight, a sort of warm red-brown color, and Laurence evidently thought them very fine: beaver, he said, and seal, and mink, which would go to make winter coats of particular warmth.

  “Perhaps I ought to have one made for Granby,” Iskierka said—showing away, Temeraire thought with some superiority, out of jealousy over Laurence’s robes; it certainly could not compare in beauty, although as a practical matter, it might not be a bad notion; but it did not seem as though it was ever cold in this country.

  Not all the furs were laid into the container, either: Mr. Chukwah and Senhor Robaldo were not allowing anything on the order of a philosophical difference to stand in the way of their making a separate arrangement, and a crate of furs was exchanged for a casket of go
ld and silver, to the satisfaction of both parties.

  At the very last, a final few containers were opened: and within them inside oilskin wrappings a second nested container, and within that another layer of oilskin, which folded back revealed at last rows upon rows of sealed wooden casks marked with characters upon the top: Silver Needle, White Dragon, Yellow Flower, and when one of these was breached, the lovely fragrant smell of tea wafted nearly to the pavilion.

  “How many tons would you say this delivery has made?” Laurence said to Tharkay, as the tea was bargained out among the captains, for really astonishing amounts of gold, Temeraire wistfully noticed.

  “Twenty at the least,” Tharkay said, and flicked a hand at the smaller pile of goods set aside at the end of the beach, those which had not been taken by anyone; Temeraire had been wondering with increasing interest what should be the fate of those neglected goods, as he could not see anything wrong with any of them. “I imagine the leavings are all they send to Sydney.”

  “It is ours: it is part of the payment for using Larrakia country,” Tharunka explained, looking up. “Whatever they cannot sell, we keep, and whatever we don’t want we trade to the Pitjantjatjara, and the Yolngu, and I think the Pitjantjatjara trade it to the Barkindji and the Wiradjuri, who take it to Sydney, and trade it to you. So everyone may have something they like, and no one has to travel anywhere they don’t want, and by the end of it, no one gets left with anything they don’t care for,” which seemed to Temeraire an eminently sensible arrangement through and through.

  Laurence did not seem quite so sanguine. “How often do the serpents come, with such a load?” he asked.

  Tharunka consulted with Binmuck, the chief of her companions: a woman with a soft and peculiarly deep voice. With the women’s habit of silent labor, this had encouraged the aviators to think her shy: but she had quite established her authority after Maynard had attempted, with an offering of rum which he had somehow once again filched out of the stores, to wheedle one of the younger women out behind the pavilion.