Victory of Eagles t-5

by Naomi Novik

  Riley and the Allegiance would be their transport, as so often before; and Catherine of course could not be spared even if she had wished to go. “Only I do not know whatever to do about the boy,” Catherine said. “I do not quite like to let him go—”

  “I do not see why,” Lily muttered, not very quietly.

  “—but if he is to go to sea, I suppose he had better begin as he will go on; and if he should prefer the Corps someday, there will be dragons enough, and perhaps he ought to be with his father,” Catherine finished, at dinner that evening; she and Berkley had come out to see him off, as of course Laurence could not come to the covert to dine while legally a prisoner. They sat together in the pavilion around a small convenient card-table, eating roast mutton and bread, sheltered from the wind by the dragons dozing comfortably around them.

  Laurence with some reluctance said, “Harcourt, under ordinary circumstances, I would not presume to offer advice on such a point; but you must recall, she will be a prison-ship for the journey; she will be carrying prisoners.” The ordinary transports ran twice a year; the Allegiance would go out of turn, but she was so vast that a great many convicts could be crammed into her between decks.

  “I suppose they will not be let to wander the ship,” she said, surprised, and he had to convey some sense of the natural order of a prison-ship: the dreadful frequency of scurvy and fever and dysentery, the misery and regular danger of rebellion.

  He was sorry to find his descriptions borne out when they came to the Allegiance the next morning, at Sheerness Dockyard: it was not pleasant to see their familiar and faithful transport all at loose ends, her crew a sad and surly crowd of pressed landsmen, some of them not far removed from the poor wretches who could be heard—and smelled—down beneath, clanking restlessly in the irons which must restrain them, so close to shore. Nearly every able seaman had been plundered away by ships with nobler duties and captains with more influence than Riley, having perhaps been tainted by too much association with Laurence, could muster to keep them for such a mission. A grating was already rigged, and fresh bloodstains beneath showed it had lately seen use; the bo’sun and his mates were bodily shoving the men to their work.

  Across the harbor, another vessel was making ready to go down the Thames, on the same wind which would keep the Allegiance in port a while longer. She made a stark contrast: a sailing barge, flat-bottomed and small next to the behemoth of the dragon transport, and manned to precision by a tiny handful of sailors all in black; even her sails were dyed black, and her sides had been freshly painted, so there was no waterline to mar her side. A great casket, black-and-gold-painted, was gently and respectfully being conveyed onto her, while her officers stood at attention.

  “That is Nelson’s coffin,” Laurence said, when Temeraire quietly inquired; a hush had fallen over all the ship, and even the most bitter of the impressed landsmen had been silenced, by the fists of their fellows if not by a sense of decorum, while the casket was in view. Tears showed on hardened faces, and Laurence could hear one man sobbing like a child, somewhere up in the rigging. A confused prickling of tears stood in his own eyes.

  Nelson had given Britain mastery of the sea at Trafalgar; from Copenhagen he had brought back eighteen prizes and secured the passages of the Baltic Sea. All the month before the battle at Shoe-buryness had been joined, he had with his fleet swept the Channel clean of French shipping and beaten away at the regular French flights, so Napoleon should have no reinforcements. The ships had concealed their flags and painted over their names, so no-one should realize he had returned, and for love of him not a man out of five thousand sailors and more had deserted, even while the ships hid in home ports.

  His personal sins might have been excused, though Nelson had selfishly exposed his wife to the misery of his flagrant unfaithfulness, and his friend Lord Hamilton to the astonished censure of the world. If Lady Hamilton had rescued her reputation, by her heroic spy-work in the occupation, it did not redeem Nelson’s choice; but if, for so much victory and sacrifice, all these venial matters should have been passed over, there were worse evils to Nelson’s account. He had defended slavery, and without a qualm advocated the hideous murder of those thousands of dragons, allies and neutrals as well as their enemies, by the spreading of the plague: evils Laurence could never forgive, and whose consequence he would personally bear the rest of his life.

  Yet for a moment, Laurence could feel nothing but the deepest wrenching misery, watching the barge heave off the dock and those black sails filling; a grief unburdened by judgment; a grief he might have felt wholeheartedly, in another life. Guns were firing as the barge passed away down the river: an impromptu thunder of salutes. A hurried struggle went forward on the deck behind them, and the Allegiance’s ragged crew managed by simple weight of her massive thirty-twos to contribute a meaningful roar or two to the procession, though they could not yet fire a broadside in unison.

  The barge vanished swiftly over the horizon, carried inland by wind and tide. Distantly the salutes went on, like a receding storm, and at last faded entirely. The Allegiance groaned softly at her anchors, and the unhappy life of the ship resumed behind him. Laurence breathed again. He had not wept, in the end.

  Temeraire had watched the procession with interest; now he stretched his wings—cautiously, to keep them in line with the wind and not abreast of it—and asked, “Will we leave soon?”

  “When the captain and the passengers are come aboard,” Laurence said. “In a few days, perhaps, if the wind turns fair.”

  They, of course, had been required aboard earlier, as they were not passengers but prisoners; and if Laurence were disposed to forget their official status, the first lieutenant, Lord Purbeck, was not. A guard—a wholly useless guard, two Marines armed with muskets, whom Temeraire might accidentally have knocked over without noticing—had been placed on the steps to the dragondeck, and when Laurence looked for his things, they had been stowed in a small, dark cabin beside the stern ladderway, two decks down: as near to the gaol-deck as practical, without being right in it, and full of the stench. To this he was followed by the guard, and they looked as though they would have liked to keep him in it; until he said, “You may go up, then, and explain to Temeraire I am not allowed to come to him.”

  The aviators began to come aboard irregularly: they were not an assembled crew, of course, with their own dragon, but rather were drifting over from Dover covert, by twos and threes, including two of the captains Jane had sent: both of them older men lately dropped to earth by the death of their former dragons, in the dreadful epidemic, long before anyone had looked for such an event; experienced men, who might have looked for long careers ahead of them. Another man they would take aboard in Gibraltar; three eggs were to be sent with them.

  These were delivered, with great care and attention, by a party of three dragons. The eggs, swaddled in cotton wadding and lowered down into a nest built for them over the galley, were not what anyone would call a real prize: one Yellow Reaper, and one unfortunate cross between a Chequered Nettle and a Parnassian, who had somehow produced a shockingly small egg that looked more likely to produce a Winchester than a heavy-weight. The third, delivered by Arkady himself, was his own: or so he smugly informed them, and had been lately produced by Wringe. He was not at all sorry to see the egg go, convinced it was an especial honor to have it sent to a wide-open and unclaimed territory; although he stayed a long time lecturing Temeraire sternly on his duty of oversight and care, and extracting promises Temeraire should be sure the egg was not touched by anyone at all, and that only someone very rich should be permitted to become the captain.

  “I am glad to see you again, before we go,” Laurence said, to Tharkay, awkwardly; they had not spoken, since that day in the camp, when Tharkay had so easily and so wrenchingly cut him to the bone; Laurence scarcely knew whether to apologize or to express gratitude.

  “You need not bid me farewell, just yet; I am coming,” Tharkay said. “Captain Riley has been good enoug
h to invite me as his guest.”

  “I did not know you knew him,” Laurence said, as near as he could come to questioning.

  “I did not,” Tharkay said, “but Captain Harcourt was good enough to introduce me. I am tolerably well in pocket, at present, thanks to your admiral’s generosity,” he added, seeing that Laurence was surprised, “and I have never been to Terra Australis; the journey tempts me.”

  Wanderlust might drive a man across the ocean or to the farther side of the world; it would not drive him aboard a ship with one he despised, when funds would have allowed him to choose his passage. “Then I am glad we shall be shipmates,” Laurence said: as far as he could trust himself to express his feelings, without giving mortification to himself or any other.

  Riley came aboard late, and grim, and alone, with the tide already making a noise against her sides; he did not come to greet Laurence, of course, but neither did he say anything to the two captains, or to Tharkay, technically at least his guest. He went instead directly to his cabin, and came out only to weigh anchor and make sail; before sequestering himself again. Purbeck knew his work, and managed despite the very awkward crew to get them out of the harbor, with only the least direction; and then the black waters of the Channel were slipping away behind them.

  TEMERAIRE PUT HIS HEAD over the side and studied the waves, as they went, and said to Laurence, “I only wish I knew how she did it; I might practice, to work it out?” But Laurence with some energy dissuaded him, although Temeraire protested he would only make the waves go away from the ship; even so, Laurence did not think Riley or the sailors would like it.

  Temeraire sighed, and settled himself again; it was bad enough to be facing so long a sea-journey again, when all his friends were building pavilions, and soon to have pay: it was worse yet to be sent to such a strange and unfriendly country, which had no dragons at all. He was sure if it were at all nice, some dragons would have gone there before; so it must be wholly dreadful, and he was particularly anxious for the eggs. Not that he would let anything happen to them, of course, but it was a heavy responsibility, and none of them even his own. It did not seem very fair.

  “Will it be very long?” he asked Laurence, the next morning, already feeling rather discouraged by the monotony of the horizon; he was gloomily unsurprised to hear they should be sailing for seven months, or longer.

  “We must put in at Gibraltar and then at St. Helena,” Laurence said, “as we cannot put in at the Cape anymore; and then likely again at New Amsterdam.”

  “And you are sure we might not just as well go to China?” Temeraire asked. “We might fly there overland—” But Laurence did not wish to do it.

  “I do not mean to be a martyr,” he said, “but the law must be the law for everyone; and it has bent for me a great deal already, and for you; however grudgingly. Though our actions were just, I cannot easily forget that others, who had a claim on our loyalty and our service, have suffered by them, and that our enemies thereby have profited. We have left behind England safer than she was, and free, thank God; I need not reproach myself for that. But I would yet gladly do what honorable work I might find, in her service, to repay the debt I owe, even if I may only do it indirect.”

  Temeraire would have objected strongly if anyone else had suggested that Laurence owed any more than he had given; but he could not very well quarrel with Laurence himself on the subject, if he had liked to, when he owed Laurence a debt, too. Only, he wished they were not going so very far. Already the days had begun to drag intolerably.

  “Wing, two points off the larboard stern,” the lookout cried, and Temeraire roused hopefully: perhaps it would be a battle; or perhaps Volly, coming to call them back to England; or Maximus and Lily, come to bear him company, so they should all go together.

  “But it is none of them; it is Iskierka,” he said, disgruntledly, when she had come close enough he could see the thin cloud of steam trailing her; she was flying a little sluggishly and tired, and she thumped down upon the dragondeck in much disarray: she did not have even her full harness on, and none of her crew, only Granby latched on to her neck-strap.

  “What are you doing here?” Temeraire demanded, while she thirstily drank up two barrels of his water.

  She settled herself more comfortably, looping her massive coils in a very inconvenient way, half-sprawling over the deck and some of them dangling over the sides, so that Temeraire could not help but notice that in reaching her full length she had grown longer than he was, himself. “I am coming with you.”

  “No, you are not,” Temeraire said. “We are transported, you are not; you had better go back at once.”

  “Well, I cannot,” she said. “I am too tired to fly back now, and by tomorrow morning it will be too far; so we may as well go on.”

  “I do not see what you want to come for, anyway,” Temeraire said.

  “I told you that you might give me an egg, when we had won,” Iskierka said, “so I have come to keep my promise.”

  “But I do not want to give you an egg, at all!” Temeraire said. “I do not want you aboard the ship, either: you take too much room, and you are damp.”

  “I do not take any more room than you; at least, not much more,” Iskierka said, to add insult to injury, “and I am warmer; so you needn’t quarrel.”

  “And,” Temeraire said, “you are disobeying orders again, I am sure of it: Granby would never let you come.”

  “Oh, well,” she said, “one cannot always be obeying orders. When will we be there?”

  “IT IS THIS DRATTED EGG,” Granby said to Laurence. “She is set on it having fire, and the divine wind; I have tried and tried to tell her it don’t work so, but she will not listen, and now here we are.”

  “You may take her off at Gibraltar,” Laurence suggested.

  “Oh, yes, if she will choose to go,” Granby said, and sat down upon an emptied cask of water, limp with defeat.

  Iskierka, having been given a pig to eat, had already in satisfied complacence gone to sleep; her steadily issuing cloud of vapor went spilling over the bow and trailing away along either side of the ship, as though to illustrate their steady pace, farther away from England. Temeraire had pushed her mostly to one half the dragondeck, as best he could, and now sat coiled up and disgruntled, with his ruff flattened against his neck.

  “You may be glad of the company, before we have crossed the line,” Laurence said, by way of comfort.

  “I will not, even if I am very bored; any more than I would be glad of a typhoon,” Temeraire said, broodingly. “And I am sure she will be a bad influence upon the eggs.”

  Laurence looked at Iskierka, and at Granby, who was presently drowning his sorrow in a glass of rum; Tharkay had come on deck and prudently caught one of the runners, to send for a bottle. “At least you need not fear for their safety,” he suggested.

  “Unless she should set the ship on fire,” Temeraire said; a good deal too loudly for the comfort of any sailor in ear-shot, which might have omitted those two decks below, or in the stern.

  “Then I am afraid you must study philosophy,” Laurence said, “and learn to bear the misfortune. I hope the arrangement is at least preferable to the breeding grounds.”

  “Oh! Anything might be better than that, and still be dreadful,” Temeraire said, and with a sigh settled his head down forward. “Pray, Laurence; let us have the Principia Mathematica, as there is nothing better?”

  “Again?” Laurence said, but sent Emily down for the book. She returned scowling, at the state of his quarters, but with a shake of his head he dissuaded her from any word to Temeraire. “Where shall I begin?” he asked, but he did not immediately hear the answer, as he looked down and put his hands on the book: his fingers caught on the delicate pages, and traced the embossed lines of the heavy cover, leather stamped with gilt. The same book under his hands, the salt wind in his face, Temeraire at his side; nothing changed outwardly, and yet in his essentials he felt as wholly altered as if he had been reborn, since t
he last time he had set foot upon the deck of a ship: a tide coming in, high and fast, which had swept clean the sand.

  “Laurence?” Temeraire said. “Would you prefer another?”

  “No, my dear,” Laurence said. “I do very well.”

  Acknowledgments

  So many, many thanks to my fabulous beta readers for this one: Sara Booth, Francesca Coppa, Alison Feeney, and especially Georgina Paterson. I also have to say a big thank-you to my copy editor Laura Jorstad for all her hard work, and especially for the lovely, lovely timeline, which was ever so much more splendid than my sad Excel worksheet.

  Special thanks to my agent, Cynthia Manson, and to my very patient editor, Betsy Mitchell, who did not heap too many coals of fire on my head as the deadlines crept quietly away from me. (They do this in the night. Tricky creatures, deadlines.) And to my sister, Sonia, who put me up when (on more than one occasion) I had to flee the dangerous temptations of my home Internet connection and shiny desktop in order to get the book over the finish line in the last nick of time.

  I also want to take advantage of my little soapbox here this time to say a special thanks to the whole fan community. I’ve been participating in this community and writing fan fiction since my teens, and I wouldn’t be anywhere near here without that experience and all the incredible people I’ve met thereby. I’ve had the privilege of working with dozens of different beta readers, and serving as one myself for many fellow writers, and I’ve learned tremendously from each and every one. Though I can’t thank them individually and knew most of them only by their online names, I still want to say a heartfelt thank you to them all, and to all the amazing volunteers that I’ve been working with this last year on the Organization for Transformative Works.

  And last and first, all my gratitude and love to Charles, my very best reader, whom I trust and who trusts me with the priceless gift of honest critique, and the even better gift of happiness.