Throne of Jade t-2

by Naomi Novik

  Storm-covers were being laid down over the hatches; Laurence made a final inspection of Temeraire’s restraints, then said to Granby, “Send the men below; I will take the first watch.” He ducked under the oilskins by Temeraire’s head again and stood by him, stroking the soft muzzle. “We are in for a long blow, I am afraid,” he said. “Could you eat something more?”

  “I ate yesterday late, I am not hungry,” Temeraire said; in the dark recesses of the hood his pupils had widened, liquid and black, with only the thinnest crescent rims of blue. The iron chains moaned softly as he shifted his weight again, a higher note against the steady deep creaking of the timber, the ship’s beams working. “We have been in a storm before, on the Reliant,” he said. “I did not have to wear such chains then.”

  “You were much smaller, and so was the storm,” Laurence said, and Temeraire subsided, but not without a wordless grumbling murmur of discontent; he did not pursue conversation, but lay silently, occasionally scraping his talons against the edges of the chains. He was lying with his head pointed away from the bow, to avoid the spray; Laurence could look out past his muzzle and watch the sailors, busy getting on the storm-lashings and taking in the topsails, all noise but the low metallic grating muffled by the thick layer of fabric.

  By two bells in the forenoon watch, the ocean was coming over the bulwarks in thick overlapping sheets, an almost continuous waterfall pouring over the edge of the dragondeck onto the forecastle. The galleys had gone cold; there would be no fires aboard until the storm had blown over. Temeraire huddled low to the deck and complained no more but drew the oilskin more closely around them, his muscles twitching beneath the hide to shake off the rivulets that burrowed deep between the layers. “All hands, all hands,” Riley was saying, distantly, through the wind; the bosun took up the call with his bellowing voice cupped in his hand, and the men came scrambling up onto the deck, thump-thump of many hurrying feet through the planking, to begin the work of shortening sail and getting her before the wind.

  The bell was rung without fail at every turn of the half-hourglass, their only measure of time; the light had failed early on, and sunset was only an incremental increase of darkness. A cold blue phosphorescence washed the deck, carried on the surface of the water, and illuminated the cables and edges of the planks; by its weak glimmering the crests of the waves could be seen, growing steadily higher.

  Even the Allegiance could not break the present waves, but must go climbing slowly up their faces, rising so steeply that Laurence could look straight down along the deck and see the bottom of the wave trenches below. Then at last her bow would get over the crest: almost with a leap she would tilt over onto the far side of the collapsing wave, gather herself, and plunge deep and with shattering force into the surging froth at the bottom of the trench. The broad fan of the dragondeck then rose streaming, scooping a hollow out of the next wave’s face; and she began the slow climb again from the beginning, only the drifting sand in the glass to mark the difference between one wave and the next.

  Morning: the wind as savage, but the swell a little lighter, and Laurence woke from a restless, broken sleep. Temeraire refused food. “I cannot eat anything, even if they could bring it me,” he said, when Laurence asked, and closed his eyes again: exhausted more than sleeping, and his nostrils caked white with salt.

  Granby had relieved him on watch; he and a couple of the crew were on deck, huddled against Temeraire’s other side. Laurence called Martin over and sent him to fetch some rags. The present rain was too mixed with spray to be fresh, but fortunately they were not short of water, and the fore scuttlebutt had been full before the storm. Clinging with both hands to the life-lines stretched fore and aft the length of the deck, Martin crept slowly along to the barrel, and brought the rags dripping back. Temeraire barely stirred as Laurence gently wiped the salt rims away from his nose.

  A strange, dingy uniformity above with neither clouds nor sun visible; the rain came only in short drenching bursts flung at them by the wind, and at the summit of the waves the whole curving horizon was full of the heaving, billowing sea. Laurence sent Granby below when Ferris came up, and took some biscuit and hard cheese himself; he did not care to leave the deck. The rain increased as the day wore on, colder now than before; a heavy cross-sea pounded the Allegiance from either side, and one towering monster broke its crest nearly at the height of the foremast, the mass of water coming down like a blow upon Temeraire’s body and jarring him from his fitful sleep with a start.

  The flood knocked the handful of aviators off their feet, sent them swinging wildly from whatever hold they could get upon the ship. Laurence caught Portis before the midwingman could be washed off the edge of the dragondeck and tumbled down the stairs; but then he had to hold on until Portis could grip the life-line and steady himself. Temeraire was jerking against the chains, only half-awake and panicked, calling for Laurence; the deck around the base of the bitts was beginning to warp under his strength.

  Scrambling over the wet deck to lay hands back on Temeraire’s side, Laurence called reassurance. “It was only a wave; I am here,” he said urgently. Temeraire stopped fighting the bonds and lowered himself panting to the deck: but the ropes had been stretched. The chains were looser now just when they were needed most, and the sea was too violent for landsmen, even aviators, to be trying to resecure the knots.

  The Allegiance took another wave on her quarter and leaned alarmingly; Temeraire’s full weight slid against the chains, further straining them, and instinctively he dug his claws into the deck to try and hold on; the oak planking splintered where he grasped at it. “Ferris, here; stay with him,” Laurence bellowed, and himself struck out across the deck. Waves flooding the deck in succession now; he moved from one line to the next blindly, his hands finding purchase for him without conscious direction.

  The knots were soaked through and stubborn, drawn tight by Temeraire’s pulling against them. Laurence could only work upon them when the ropes came slack, in the narrow spaces between waves; every inch gained by hard labor. Temeraire was lying as flat as he could manage, the only help he could provide; all his other attention was given to keeping his place.

  Laurence could see no one else across the deck, obscured by flying spray, nothing solid but the ropes burning his hands and the squat iron posts, and Temeraire’s body a slightly darker region of the air. Two bells in the first dog watch: somewhere behind the clouds, the sun was setting. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a couple of shadows moving nearby; in a moment Leddowes was kneeling beside him, helping with the ropes. Leddowes hauled while Laurence tightened the knots, both of them clinging to each other and the iron bitts as the waves came, until at last the metal of the chains was beneath their hands: they had taken up the slack.

  Nearly impossible to speak over the howl; Laurence simply pointed at the second larboard bitt, Leddowes nodded, and they set off. Laurence led, staying by the rail; easier to climb over the great guns than keep their footing out in the middle of the deck. A wave passed by and gave them a moment of calm; he was just letting go the rail to clamber over the first carronade when Leddowes shouted.

  Turning, Laurence saw a dark shape coming at his head and flung up a protective hand only from instinct: a terrific blow like being struck with a poker landed on his arm. He managed to get a hand on the breeching of the carronade as he fell; he had only a confused impression of another shadow moving above him, and Leddowes, terrified and staring, was scrambling back away with both hands raised. A wave crashed over the side and Leddowes was abruptly gone.

  Laurence clung to the gun and choked on salt water, kicking for some purchase: his boots were full of water and heavy as stone. His hair had come loose; he threw his head back to get it out of his eyes, and managed to catch the descending pry-bar with his free hand. Behind it he saw with a shock of recognition Feng Li’s face looming white, terrified and desperate. Feng Li tried to pull the bar away for another attempt, and they wrestled it back and forth, Laurence half-sp
rawling on the deck with his boot-heels skidding over the the wet planks.

  The wind was a third party to the battle, trying to drive them apart, and ultimately victorious: the bar slipped from Laurence’s rope-numb fingers. Feng Li, still standing, went staggering back with arms flung wide as if to embrace the blast of the wind: full willing, it carried him backwards over the railing and into the churning water; he vanished without trace.

  Laurence clawed back to his feet and looked over the rail: no sign of Feng Li or Leddowes, either; he could not even see the surface of the water for the great clouds of mist and fog rising from the waves. No one else had even seen the brief struggle. Behind him, the bell was clanging again for the turn of the glass.

  Too confused with fatigue to make any sense of the murderous attack, Laurence said nothing, other than to briefly tell Riley the men had been lost overboard; he could not think what else to do, and the storm occupied all the attention he could muster. The wind began to fall the next morning; by the start of the afternoon watch, Riley was confident enough to send the men to dinner, though by shifts. The heavy mass of cloud cover broke into patches by six bells, the sunlight streaming down in broad, dramatic swaths from behind the still-dark clouds, and all the hands privately and deeply satisfied despite their fatigue.

  They were sorry over Leddowes, who had been well-liked and a favorite with all, but as for a long-expected loss rather than a dreadful accident: he was now proven to have been the prey of the ghost all along, and his messmates had already begun magnifying his erotic misdeeds in hushed voices to the rest of the crew. Feng Li’s loss passed without much comment, nothing more than coincidence to their minds: if a foreigner with no sea-legs liked to go frolicking about on deck in a typhoon, there was nothing more to be expected, and they had not known him well.

  The aftersea was still very choppy, but Temeraire was too unhappy to keep bound; Laurence gave the word to set him loose as soon as the crew had returned from their own dinner. The knots had swelled in the warm air, and the ropes had to be hacked through with axes. Set free, Temeraire shrugged the chains to the deck with a heavy thump, turned his head around, and dragged the oilskin blanket off with his teeth; then he shook himself all over, water running down in streams off his hide, and announced militantly, “I am going flying.”

  He leapt aloft without harness or companion, leaving them all behind and gaping. Laurence made an involuntary startled gesture after him, useless and absurd, and then dropped his arm, sorry to have so betrayed himself. Temeraire was only stretching his wings after the long confinement, nothing more; or so he told himself. He was deeply shocked, alarmed; but he could only feel the sensation dully, the exhaustion like a smothering weight lying over all his emotions.

  “You have been on deck for three days,” Granby said, and led him down below carefully. Laurence’s fingers felt thick and clumsy, and did not quite want to grip the ladder rails. Granby gripped his arm once, when he nearly slipped, and Laurence could not quite stifle an exclamation of pain: there was a tender, throbbing line where the first blow from the pry-bar had struck across his upper arm.

  Granby would have taken him to the surgeon at once, but Laurence refused. “It is only a bruise, John; and I had rather not make any noise about it yet.” But then he had perforce to explain why: disjointedly, but the story came out as Granby pressed him.

  “Laurence, this is outrageous. The fellow tried to murder you; we must do something,” Granby said.

  “Yes,” Laurence answered, meaninglessly, climbing into his cot; his eyes were already closing. He had the dim awareness of a blanket being laid over him, and the light dimming; nothing more.

  He woke clearer in his head, if not much less sore in body, and hurried from his bed at once: the Allegiance was low enough in the water he could at least tell that Temeraire had returned, but with the blanketing fatigue gone, Laurence had full consciousness to devote to worry. Coming out of his cabin thus preoccupied, he nearly fell over Willoughby, one of the harness-men, who was sleeping stretched across the doorway. “What are you doing?” Laurence demanded.

  “Mr. Granby set us on watches, sir,” the young man said, yawning and rubbing his face. “Will you be going up on deck then now?”

  Laurence protested in vain; Willoughby trailed after him like an overzealous sheepdog all the way up to the dragondeck. Temeraire sat up alertly as soon as he caught sight of them, and nudged Laurence along into the shelter of his body, while the rest of the aviators drew closed their ranks behind him: plainly Granby had not kept the secret.

  “How badly are you hurt?” Temeraire nosed him all over, tongue flickering out for reassurance.

  “I am perfectly well, I assure you, nothing more than a bump on the arm,” Laurence said, trying to fend him off; though he could not help being privately glad to see that Temeraire’s fit of temper had at least for the moment subsided.

  Granby ducked into the curve of Temeraire’s body, and unrepentantly ignored Laurence’s cold looks. “There; we have worked out watches amongst ourselves. Laurence, you do not suppose it was some sort of accident, or that he mistook you for someone else, do you?”

  “No.” Laurence hesitated, then reluctantly admitted, “This was not the first attempt. I did not think anything of it at the time, but now I am almost certain he tried to knock me down the fore hatch, after the New Year’s dinner.”

  Temeraire growled deeply, and only with difficulty restrained himself from clawing at the deck, which already bore deep grooves from his thrashing about during the storm. “I am glad he fell overboard,” he said venomously. “I hope he was eaten by sharks.”

  “Well, I am not,” Granby said. “It will make it a sight more difficult to prove whyever he was at it.”

  “It cannot have been anything of a personal nature,” Laurence said. “I had not spoken ten words to him, and he would not have understood them if I had. I suppose he could have run mad,” he said, but with no real conviction.

  “Twice, and once in the middle of a typhoon,” Granby said, contemptuously, dismissing the suggestion. “No; I am not going to stretch that far: for my part, he must have done it under orders, and that means their prince is most likely behind it all, or I suppose one of those other Chinamen; we had better find out double-quick who, before they try it again.”

  This notion Temeraire seconded with great energy, and Laurence blew out a heavy sigh. “We had better call Hammond to my cabin in private and tell him about it,” he said. “He may have some idea what their motives might be, and we will need his help to question the lot of them, anyway.”

  Summoned below, Hammond listened to the news with visible and increasing alarm, but his ideas were of quite another sort. “You seriously propose we should interrogate the Emperor’s brother and his retinue like a gang of common criminals; accuse them of conspiracy to murder; demand alibis and evidence—You may as well put a torch to the magazine and scuttle the ship; our mission will have as much chance of success that way as the other. Or, no: more chance, because at least if we are all dead and at the bottom of the ocean there can be no cause for quarrel.”

  “Well, what do you propose, then, that we ought to just sit and smile at them until they do manage to kill Laurence?” Granby demanded, growing angry in his turn. “I suppose that would suit you just as well; one less person to object to your handing Temeraire over to them, and the Corps can go hang for all you care.”

  Hammond wheeled round on him. “My first care is for our country, and not for any one man or dragon, as yours ought to be if you had any proper sense of duty—”

  “That is quite enough, gentlemen,” Laurence cut in. “Our first duty is to establish a secure peace with China, and our first hope must be to achieve it without the loss of Temeraire’s strength; on either score there can be no dispute.”

  “Then neither duty nor hope will be advanced by this course of action,” Hammond snapped. “If you did manage to find any evidence, what do you imagine could be done? Do you think we are
going to put Prince Yongxing in chains?”

  He stopped and collected himself for a moment. “I see no reason, no evidence whatsoever, to suggest Feng Li was not acting alone. You say the first attack came after the New Year; you might well have offended him at the feast unknowingly. He might have been a fanatic angered by your possession of Temeraire, or simply mad; or you might be mistaken entirely. Indeed, that seems to me the most likely—both incidents in such dim, confused conditions; the first under the influence of strong drink, the second in the midst of the storm—”

  “For the love of Christ,” Granby said rudely, making Hammond stare. “And Feng Li was shoving Laurence down hatchways and trying to knock his head in for some perfectly good reason, of course.”

  Laurence himself had been momentarily bereft of speech at this offensive suggestion. “If, sir, any of your suppositions are true, then any investigation would certainly reveal as much. Feng Li could not have concealed lunacy or such zealotry from all his country-men, as he could from us; if I had offended him, surely he would have spoken of it.”

  “And in ascertaining as much, this investigation would only require offering a profound insult to the Emperor’s brother, who may determine our success or failure in Peking,” Hammond said. “Not only will I not abet it, sir, I absolutely forbid it; and if you make any such ill-advised, reckless attempt, I will do my very best to convince the captain of the ship that it is his duty to the King to confine you.”

  This naturally ended the discussion, so far as Hammond was concerned in it; but Granby came back after closing the door behind him, with more force than strictly necessary. “I don’t know that I have ever been more tempted to push a fellow’s nose in for him. Laurence, Temeraire could translate for us, surely, if we brought the fellows up to him.”