Blood of Tyrants (Temeraire)

by Naomi Novik

  Lady Arikawa looked at Laurence with some doubt in her expression, which Laurence was inclined to share, at this particular piece of hyperbole. “And you need not look like that,” the black dragon added, very coldly, “only because Laurence has been shipwrecked, and does not look his best at present. The Emperor adopted him, five years ago, and we are on our way to make a filial visit. He is a prince of China, and my captain.”

  “The devil I am,” said Laurence.

  “I BEG YOUR PARDON,” LAURENCE said, interrupting, “but if you please, Captain, I would be grateful if you would begin earlier: the last—” He paused, not liking to give it voice, and then forced his way onwards. “The last I recall very clearly is in the year four.”

  “Oh, Lord,” Captain Granby said. He was the captain of the fire-breather, an officer of twenty-and-nine years; tall and somewhat battered, short one arm, and a pleasant, likable fellow, if almost shockingly informal in his manners and his dress of peculiar ostentation: Laurence had not seen so much gold on an admiral of the fleet. “Well, I know you took the Amitié, and Temeraire’s egg was on it—that news was all over the Corps; but as for the rest of that year, or how you came to be there, I haven’t the faintest notion. I suppose Riley could have told us—”

  “Riley?” Laurence said, with relief for a name he recognized: his second lieutenant. “Tom Riley? Do you know his direction? I might write him—” and then Granby’s look of startled regret halted him, even before Granby spoke.

  So Riley was dead—his ship the Allegiance lost. Laurence rose and went to stand by the stern windows, to breathe in the sea-air in great gulps. Granby was silent where he sat at the table, but Laurence felt his eyes upon his back.

  There was a dreadful strangeness to sit across from a man who called him Will, a man who had been his first lieutenant, and yet have his face mean nothing; it was worse, somehow, than having been all alone and adrift. Granby had been all that was kind—they had all been so, and visibly gladdened by his return. Deposited on the deck, Laurence had been embraced with enthusiasm by a dozen strangers before he had been able to make his confusion known; since then, there had been nothing but the most generous anxiety for his health—an anxiety, however, which reminded him at every turn that he was ill, wounded, and in such a manner that he might never recover from it.

  Outside the window, near the harbor mouth, he could see the curves of the sea-dragon’s body where it dozed nearly hidden beneath the waves, its presence a warning. Their own dragons were on the deck, and on a few pontoon-rafts floating about the ship; he did not, at the moment, see the black dragon—his dragon. Temeraire. Granby was speaking in low voices with the ship’s surgeon, a Mr. Pettiforth, behind his back. “I must insist we halt this interview, Captain Granby,” Pettiforth said. “You can see for yourself the inimical effects of only this one shock. There can be no question that any further strain on an already-weakened mind must be dangerous. You must withdraw. I must insist; I do insist.”

  The surgeon had vociferously argued from the beginning against any attempt to repair the omissions in Laurence’s memory by recounting the events of the intervening years, as more likely to do harm than good. “I consider it a most unique species of brain-fever,” Pettiforth had said. “I have heard of only a few similar instances described; indeed, I am sure the Royal Society will be deeply interested, should I have an opportunity to set down the facts of the case—”

  But Laurence had dismissed his advice: he longed for every scrap of intelligence, of knowledge. His feet had been bathed and bandaged; a night’s rest had seen him back on them; he could scarcely imagine delaying any further. He turned back. “Sir, I cannot deny this news is an unpleasant shock, but I am by no means prepared to halt. Captain Granby, if you please—”

  “I beg your pardon,” Mr. Hammond broke in, anxiously. “I beg your pardon most extremely, Captain, but I think we must abide by Mr. Pettiforth’s advice for the moment, and ask you to consider—I hope you will forgive my saying so—consider it the course most consistent with your duty.”

  “I can scarcely perform the least duty,” Laurence said, “when I do not know what that duty is, sir: so far as I knew before yesterday evening, I was a sea-captain, not an aviator.”

  “At present,” Hammond said, “our most pressing need is for your continued health. You can do nothing if you have been prostrated by an aggravation of your—your injury, and your presence is vital—utterly vital—to all the hopes of our mission.”

  Laurence hesitated. Hammond was the King’s envoy, and evidently in charge of their mission to China; his urgency could not help but carry great weight. “Thank Heavens that you have not lost your facility with the Chinese language—I must credit,” Hammond added, “the extent of our practice, the several months of our voyage—your dedication there, Captain, has been very commendable, and I consider this the reward; everything else can be managed. I assure you, we will manage. We will begin at once to review the likely ceremonies of welcome: our arrival at Tien-sing, the forms of your greeting to the crown prince, and to the Emperor—”

  If anything had been likely to give him a relapse of brain-fever, Laurence thought it would be the programme of etiquette study which Hammond laid out, which would have been a punishment even if spread over the course of three years. How he intended to touch upon all its parts in the space of time required to sail from Nagasaki to Tien-sing harbor, Laurence had not the least notion.

  “All the more need, sir,” Mr. Pettiforth interjected, “not to add any additional strain upon your nerves. Avoiding any particular, any notable shock,” he looked at Granby with a hard, meaningful look, which Laurence could not interpret, “must be of the utmost importance.”

  Granby looked at Laurence helplessly; Laurence drew and released a deep breath. “Very well,” he said, grimly. “I will be guided by you, gentlemen.”

  He would rather have forgone the study, and closeted himself with Granby until he knew every detail that could be obtained of the last eight years from one who had been his close companion in nearly all of that time, from what he understood. But he could not refuse Hammond’s request. His weakness of brain had already endangered their cause—it was incumbent upon him to do whatever he might to assist a mission whose urgency was evident.

  Britain’s situation, and that of all Europe, was more desperate than he had feared at the worst. Granby had, to his great comfort, been able to assure him of the health of his family, but little else of good could be said. The story of the invasion of Britain, of which he until now had received only the faintest outlines, had filled Laurence with horror: Nelson dead—Nelson, and fourteen ships-of-the-line sunk. Even so complete a victory over Napoleon as had been achieved could scarcely compensate for such a loss.

  Indeed, Laurence was forced to give some credence to Pettiforth’s concerns: if there had been more such disasters, in the years he had lost, he did wonder how well he might support the news. “But I must learn something of my duties,” he said, “enough at least to carry them out: there is no telling but we may see battle, and at least the dragons must be exercised, surely? Captain Granby, who is the senior officer of our company?”

  Granby rubbed his face with his good hand. “It has been all in the air, anyway—Harcourt has command of the formation, but you and I aren’t formally assigned to her, or she to either of us, and—oh, damn it all,” he muttered, at Laurence’s bafflement—her?—and turning said, “look, Hammond, I must tell him something.”

  But even when Granby had explained, appallingly, that Longwings insisted on female captains, and that the slim young gentleman captaining that beast was indeed a woman, he had not much clarified their chain of command. “It goes by the beasts, you know,” he said. “It’s not much use our standing on ceremony, if they settle it otherwise amongst themselves; it don’t matter if a Winchester’s captain has twenty years on me when Iskierka gives a snort, you can be sure.”

  With four heavy-weights and a Longwing aboard, such a policy mu
st surely have kept the command in a state of peculiar confusion: all the more so that the captain of the largest beast, an immense golden creature called Kulingile, was scarcely more than a boy, and not British at all but from Africa; Laurence could hardly imagine how he had been appointed to his post. “Well, he wasn’t,” Granby said, “Demane is from Capetown, you took him and his brother up when—” He halted abruptly, biting his lip. “You took them up,” he continued awkwardly, leaving an ominous gap behind him, “as your runners, and he picked up the beast when no-one else would have it: came out of the shell deformed, and not the size of a lamb.”

  In any case, despite his size Kulingile did not seem inclined to assert his precedence particularly; and even after what little time Laurence had spent on deck amongst them so far, he could scarcely help noticing that the other beasts seemed inclined to give way to Temeraire, if to anyone. Laurence realized grimly he might well himself be the senior officer, by such a measure, and his injury all the more potentially disastrous: better in some way had he been wholly incapacitated, than presenting this peculiar mix of competence and confusion.

  But he did not press Granby further for explanation. To have worked through an accounting of eight years all together would have been difficult enough, but it was still worse to acquire piecemeal details, and see the awkward hesitation on Granby’s face as he tried to explain first one and then another chain of events, yet without conveying any information likely to cause distress, entangling the narrative at every turn. He faltered too often, and with a look almost pleading, as though he hoped Laurence would suddenly be recalled to himself: even while that same hope, privately but deeply held, quietly died away in Laurence’s own breast.

  “So far as the command is concerned, then, I will defer to you, Captain Granby, at present,” he said, cutting short the attempt, “and I trust you will feel not the least hesitation at correcting me in any failure to carry out my necessary duties. For the rest, my health has scarcely had a chance to recover, after the exertions of my escape; let us hope that in returning, it may restore my memory with it.”

  It was an empty sop, which he did not himself believe, though Granby seized upon it with eager relief and Hammond chimed in with eager agreement, although Mr. Pettiforth murmured quietly to himself, “Not at all likely—I wonder whether further degeneration ought to be expected, if anything. I must keep a journal of the progression—”

  Laurence saw them out. He was glad to be left alone again in his cabin, though housed amongst things he did not recognize: even his sea-chest was unfamiliar to him, new and rough-hewn, a cheap construction which must have been bought in desperation and which should shortly have to be replaced; a green creeping stain was already to be seen growing upon the underside. The chest was full of books, though he had never been a great reader: Principia Mathematica so well-worn the corners of the pages were smooth where he evidently liked to turn them. There were only two pieces of correspondence: one letter from his mother, another, with the direction very badly scribbled and nearly unreadable, from the Peninsula: from a fellow-officer, then.

  “Well,” he said aloud, “I might be dead, or in a prison,” and threw them back into his writing-desk, next to the log-book, which he also had not opened. He was resolved not to succumb to despair. He had the use of his limbs, and his reason; he had lost less than many another man in the service.

  He belted his sword back on, went up to the dragondeck, and found Temeraire rousing from an exhausted sleep and looking for him. Hammond was there before him, trying to keep Temeraire’s attention, and explaining in a loud voice, which could surely be heard across all the ship, “It is of the utmost importance that Captain Laurence be spared any unnecessary shock, which might further injure his weakened mind—I beg you to attend me, Temeraire! I assure you that we have every reason to expect his memory to return shortly, if you will only have a care not to—”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” Temeraire said, looking at him not at all. “Laurence!” he called, a ringing eager note in his resonant voice, which might be felt even through the deck: his ruff was standing up in a manner which somehow suggested to Laurence his excitement. “Laurence, how much more yourself you look: you must be better, I am sure,” he said, when Laurence had mounted to the deck. There was an anxious question in the words, however. Temeraire had been lately injured himself, Laurence gathered, by some mishap in the rescue of the ship; and his spirits had been badly beset by the belief of Laurence’s own death.

  It seemed absurd to think of so terrible a creature as fragile in any way. The head bending towards him was nearly the size of a horse, the teeth standing in the jaws larger than his hand, serrated along their back edges and hard ivory. Strangely Laurence felt no fear, no instinct of alarm, though it seemed to him any rational man ought to; he had seen, only last night, what appalling devastation might be wrought by this beast.

  But even without fear, it was difficult to think of Temeraire as vulnerable—and yet perhaps not so difficult: a first-rate off a lee-shore, and his the duty to keep her off the rocks. Laurence still did not wholly understand how he had come to harness the beast, to become an aviator; he did not know what might have impelled him to do such a thing. But for the moment, it would have to be enough to know that he had done so: that he had given up his naval rank, his ship, and all his hard-won prospects. No need to wonder, either, what had become of Edith Galman. She had surely wed another, a man who could offer her a respectable home and name. Laurence was determined to be glad of it; she deserved as much and more.

  Duty remained: his country’s need stood above his own concerns. “I am much better, indeed,” he said. “I beg you have no concern for me. How is your own health?”

  “Oh!” Temeraire said, “I am perfectly well, now; I have been a little ill, but that is quite done with; I am quite recovered. Laurence,” he added urgently, leaning his massive head down to the deck, and peering at him with one anxious slitted eye, “of course you know that I would have come for you at once—I would not have permitted anything to interfere—if it had not been for the egg. I am so dreadfully sorry.”

  The rest of the afternoon was consumed in displaying this prize for him: the dragon insisted on Laurence’s being taken below, on the crate and all its careful packing being undone to display the egg. It might have been made of gold and diamonds for the degree of passionate interest which Temeraire gave it, and not only he: the fire-breather, evidently the dam, roused herself and watched with equal attention, so that Laurence could scarcely make out the unremarkable shell for having one enormous eye peering in at either porthole, blocking the light.

  He was invited to touch the shell, with great care and an open palm: a tender softness not unlike the head of his nine-day-old nephew, when that child had been laid carefully in his hands by a watchful mother. Having returned to the dragondeck and being pressed for his opinion, he used very much the same expressions as on that occasion. “A remarkable egg,” he said, “perfectly hearty, and the size prodigious: I congratulate you both extremely, and I am sure it will do very well; extraordinarily well.” He meant his compliments wholeheartedly: he could well imagine the worth to England of such a cross-breed. His effusions could not have satisfied Temeraire, however, if they had been ten times as enthusiastic, until Laurence gradually came to realize that half of the dragon’s anxiety was to be sure that Laurence did not blame him, for not having come to his rescue.

  “You could scarcely have found me, if you had tried,” Laurence said. “I do not think I had been on shore half-an-hour before I was taken up.”

  “I would have contrived, somehow,” Temeraire said. “I found you in Africa, after all, when—oh; I am not meant to speak of that, am I? But in any case, Laurence, so long as you are satisfied—so long as you do not suppose I would have allowed any lesser cause to weigh with me.”

  Laurence was not entirely satisfied: the lesser causes had evidently included abandoning the ship, their mission, and perhaps even setting off a war wit
h Japan: all for his sake, and here was Temeraire making apology to him for not doing any of these things. He began to feel there was an almost dreadful responsibility inherent in the rôle, a rôle for which nothing had prepared him, and which he felt wholly unsuited to carry out. The distance between this and a ship’s command seemed a vast yawning gulf.

  But he could not chide the dragon for his affection; particularly not when Temeraire had been under so great a strain, its evidence marked in the dull hide and the weary look in the dragon’s eyes: his eyelids were heavy again already. Laurence lay his hand against Temeraire’s warm breathing hide, its peculiar combination of resilience and softness at once familiar and not so. “I have been restored to you in defiance of all expectation and without, I hope, any evil consequence to our mission; we must both be satisfied with that outcome, and I beg you believe me so.”

  Temeraire sighed deeply, and lowered his head to his forelegs. “I am very glad to hear you say so,” he said. “I was sure, Laurence, that you would not think it right of me to leave the egg—that you would tell me, if you were here, that it was my own responsibility, and I could not leave it to others no matter how much I might wish to go looking for you, not when the egg was not perfectly safe. I was quite sure, but oh! It was dreadful nonetheless, and I did fear that perhaps I had judged wrongly.”

  “You did not, at all,” Laurence said, with a good deal of relief: so a dragon need not be insensate to duty at all. And then he was at a loss: what ought he do else, for the beast? Should he order aerial exercises? He did not see the other dragons engaged in such work, and indeed it might have been a provocation to the Japanese, to do so in harbor; besides this, he knew nothing of what his duties should be.