Blood of Tyrants (Temeraire)

by Naomi Novik

  He turned his face back to the prow, and tried to persuade himself to be content. A transport was no graceful sailor, but the Potentate was answering beautifully to the wind so directly at her back, nearly her one good point of sailing. Surely no heart could fail to rise beneath so vast and brilliant a spread of sailcloth: four great masts rigged out from mainsail to topgallants. They might well be going twelve knots, a glorious rushing of wind upon his face and everything calculated to delight.

  The dragons were still chattering amongst themselves behind him, speaking with pleasure of the entertainment they had lately seen, and their dinner: the equal of any party of drunken officers after a revelry, with two bottles of port in their bellies. Laurence was hard-put not to laugh. It ought have occurred to him, he supposed, that creatures gifted with speech would of a certainty proceed to gossip. He was an old hand at not eavesdropping upon shipboard conversations, but the flow of their strange, resonating voices, which seemed somehow to issue from the base of their throats and not their lips, was a comfortable rumble in the back of his mind, until gradually he became aware that there was an absence. Temeraire was scarcely speaking, and when he did answer some inquiry put to him directly, his voice was quiet and subdued; he lay facing the prow, looking ahead, and apart from the others.

  Laurence slowly went to him; he felt uncertain—what could one say, to a dragon? He had no orders to give. But Temeraire’s head lifted and turned to meet him, something half-hopeful and wary in his looks; Laurence said, “If you are not otherwise occupied, may I bear you company?”

  “Oh!” Temeraire said, “as though you had to ask, Laurence. Would you—perhaps would you care to have out the dear old Principia Mathematica, and have a look into that? If you have forgotten it, you may at least have the pleasure of reading it afresh.”

  Laurence was taken aback: it had not occurred to him a dragon might be a great reader, although belatedly he recalled Kiyo’s fascination with poetry. Gerry was sent for the book, and returned quickly; Temeraire dragged a foreleg forward, out from beneath the heap of dragons, and held it forth. He plainly meant it as a couch, and when Laurence put his hands to it, he found he knew how to climb up, and his body remembered the seat in the elbow’s crook as though he were going blindfold up into the rigging. Laurence sat still a moment with the book open upon his lap, struggling with a kind of horror between bone-deep familiarity and endless strangeness.

  “Laurence?” the dragon asked, anxiously. “Are you well? Shall I send for the ship’s surgeon?”

  “I am well,” Laurence said, drawing his breath deep; for what alternative was there? “Where should you like me to begin?”

  DESPITE A DISQUIETING LACK of any shipboard duties, Laurence had very little leisure on their journey: every hour was consumed by Hammond urgently cramming a thousand details of a foreign court into his head, with the assistance of the Chinese nobleman who was the envoy of the crown prince, Gong Su. Laurence felt himself dragged unwilling back to schoolboy days, with two tutors far more zealous than his own had been—and he had fled the schoolroom for the sea.

  Worse yet, the tutoring only increased his impatience with himself. The most absurd sorts of minutiae came to him easily: he could navigate a formal dinner of nine courses, walk without a stumble in the elaborate formal dress, incline his head in the correct degree, all as though he had known these things from childhood; he could repeat over long and flowery phrases in the foreign tongue as though he had been their author, and meanwhile his own history remained unfathomable.

  Three days dragged by before he had so much as an hour to himself, on the occasion of Mr. Hammond’s having been asked to dine by Captain Blaise. Laurence was in turn asked to Captain Harcourt’s table and found that anticipated relief worse than the endless study: he could take no pleasure in being surrounded by those who so frequently checked their anecdotes, and hushed one another, and looked at him anxiously, lest he should have heard anything to distress him. Nor was it any comfort when Dulcia’s Captain Chenery said heartily, “Do you know, Laurence, I knew a fellow who was knocked off his beast at the Nile—landed on his head on the deck of the Tonnant, and could not speak a word at all for three years; but then one day he woke up and asked for coffee,” as on further inquiry, it turned out that this was the extent of the gentleman’s recovery, and he had died in a sudden fit two years later on.

  Laurence excused himself as soon as he could, and sought the solitude of his cabin as preferable; there in a kind of rebellion against the coddling he took out his writing-desk and opened it to read his letters. But he was only disturbed further by his mother’s strange and half-stilted letter, and when he found amongst its general awkwardness a wholly incomprehensible passage:

  And I trust that Miss Emily Roland is in good Health, and pray that you will assure her of my Interest in her Progress; I have enclosed a set of Ear-Rings, which she might enjoy, when not Impractical in the course of her Duties …

  Laurence read these words some four times over before he was perfectly convinced of having them correctly, though he could read his mother’s hand as easily as print, and then laying the letter down sat back in his chair, very blank. He did not know what to make of it in the least.

  He had been surprised enough himself to discover that Mr. Roland was in fact Miss Roland: Temeraire had not seen fit to make note of the fact while giving him the names of his officers, and so Laurence had suffered several uncomfortable moments on finding a young lady so unexpectedly at his dinner table that first evening. He could not think how she should be addressed, much less treated; whether she ought to be given precedence at the table, as the only lady present, or left halfway down the side as her midwingman’s rank would have her. He had in some confusion resolved on treating her as an officer: she had come in uniform, wearing trousers, and was evidently destined for command of a Longwing, from what Granby had told him. But Laurence had not been easy with the decision, though Roland herself had shown not the least consciousness of any peculiarity.

  She seemed, indeed, a perfectly respectable officer, from what little he had seen of her since then. But Laurence could not imagine he would have confided such a peculiar aspect of the service to his mother; and if he had done so, he would scarcely have made Roland personally known to her; and having done that, he could still not reconcile his mother’s taking so particular and forthright an interest in a junior officer under his command, and sending her gifts of so personal a nature.

  The ear-rings were gone, evidently having been delivered when the letter was first opened. Laurence looked into the writing-desk again, and drew out the other letter, which when he studied the direction more closely was revealed to be from an Admiral Roland: perhaps a close friend, he wondered, whom he had forgotten entirely? Eight years might have made enough intimacy to offer some explanation—if this Admiral Roland were of a family distantly related to his own, somehow? He could not remember any such connection, but as he read the letter through, he grew convinced: the letter, quite short and written in an unlovely hand, was generally not that of a superior to a subordinate, save in a few lines surely intended jokingly, that directed him by no means to run Britain into another war or two, or undertake a fresh Crusade. It was a frank note, and it quickly formed in Laurence’s mind a decided portrait of its author: an officer not very much older than himself, confident in his own judgment, secure in his position and influence; a gentleman of perhaps forty-and-five, writing him a brief note amid the consuming routine of his duties, a serving-officer and not some mere retired admiral, and Emily’s father, this last confirmed by the mention of a dragon named Excidium, who sent Emily his affection.

  All seemed plain, easy to understand, until Laurence came to the end of the letter and this comforting portrait was entirely exploded by the scribbled signature, “Yours, etc., Jane.”

  Laurence could scarcely avoid the only, the obvious conclusion, about Miss Emily Roland’s origins: a conclusion made all the more certain when he had looked in at the res
t of his papers, and found in his brief accounts the salary of Mrs. Pemberton, Miss Roland’s chaperone, paid directly from his personal funds. Badly staggered, he went up to the dragondeck: Miss Roland was returned from her own dinner and at the moment engaged, at his own request, in trying to teach English to a silent and largely unresponsive Junichiro. Mrs. Pemberton, a composed lady of not quite thirty years of age, her dark hair tucked neatly beneath a cap, was sitting on a coiled cable and sewing as she supervised; she nodded as he came up the stairs. “Captain,” she said, politely: Laurence touched his hat and said a few words to her while he watched her charge: could the girl be his own natural-born child?

  He saw no great similarity of feature: Roland’s face was round and she was stocky rather than tall. But to counterbalance this, she did have rather a look of his aunt Stourland in the chin, a stubborn determination; and there was very little difference between her fair hair and his own, if one made allowances for the effects of sun-bleaching. Roland certainly had not treated him as a father, but as her commanding officer; however, as this was how he would have expected any son of his to behave in similar circumstances, whether illegitimate or no, he could not argue himself out of it on those grounds alone.

  He crossed over to her and Junichiro. “How do your studies go?” he asked, to be answered only by a half-bow and silence, on Junichiro’s part, while Emily said, “I am sure he will soon have the trick of it, sir,” rather doubtfully.

  Junichiro too plainly did not care to learn; he had a dull look of resignation. “I intend,” Laurence had told him, “to seek you a commission with the Aerial Corps; you have no fear of dragons, I know, and I think you will do very well: there is no reason you should not be assigned to serve dragon-back, and advance through the ranks; you might aspire to a beast of your own, at length. Or I will buy your commission in the army, if you prefer: once you have learnt English.”

  Junichiro had expressed no preference, no enthusiasm at all; he had said only, briefly, “It does not matter.” He had carried out any small task he was put to, silently and quickly, and took no initiative; he otherwise remained a solitary fixture on the deck.

  Laurence shook his head privately; sensible of his own debt, he still did not know what else to do. “Carry on,” he said to Roland, and went to the forward railing, near where Temeraire dozed after his own meal.

  “Why yes, of course Admiral Roland is Emily’s mother,” Temeraire said sleepily, when Laurence could not resist quietly inquiring of him, “and whyever would she be married? She has Excidium, of course. There is not the least reason for her to be married.”

  Laurence could not conceive how Emily should have been got: she was sixteen, so her birth ought not have been lost from his memory, and he did not remember any incident for which he should have had to reproach himself, involving a Jane Roland. But the weight of evidence was too damning, and he now wondered with alarm whether he could not trust his memory of earlier dates any better than that of the later. He ran a hand through his hair: he could feel no trace of the injury; what swelling there had been, had vanished quite, without bringing any relief of his condition. The ocean streamed away before the ship to either side, very familiar and home-like—if only he stood in the bow and did not look behind him to see the dragons, the vast decks of the transport, the crew that were not his own.

  He turned and found Temeraire grown more wakeful, and regarding him with an anxiety as great as that of his fellow-officers. Laurence meant to summon up a more cheerful expression, but Temeraire said abruptly, before he could put on a better face, “Laurence, shall we not go up together? I suppose that fellow Pettiforth knows what he is about,” this said with as much doubt as Laurence felt, “but there is nothing which could be distressing about flying; and we needn’t talk about the past at all. We might practice some more of those maneuvers Churki has taught me, that the Inca squadrons use: we might try some which I do not know very well, and work out our own counters for them, together.”

  Laurence surprised himself by finding this offer, though from so unexpected a quarter, intensely appealing; Gerry went running for his harness, which Laurence found himself able to sling on as easily as an old favorite coat, and Temeraire put him up to his neck. The carabiner clasps were comfortable in his hands. Laurence harnessed himself to the heavy and well-secured chain of the breastplate Temeraire wore, and felt the enormous leap that took them off the deck like a springing away from care: wind tearing by and the curving vastness of the world opening wide beneath them, even the massive Potentate diminishing into toy-like insignificance as Temeraire circled higher; they seemed almost level with the enormous cloud-banks that broke up the sky a little way north.

  Laurence drew a deep breath of the thin cold air, gladly, and Temeraire turned his head at the end of his long neck, looking back at him, and called, “Is this not splendid, Laurence? Shall we try a first pass?”

  “I am ready whenever you should care to make the attempt,” Laurence answered him, and held on with real delight as Temeraire flung himself into a spiraling course.

  He was all the happier to find that he could offer some thoughts—tentative, but he hoped not foolish—on the subject of the maneuvers: several points at which Temeraire’s head had been concealed from him, by the contortions of his body, which he thought might open a dragon to being taken by surprise with an attack aimed at the vulnerable back. Temeraire agreed with his conclusions, and after some further exercise, they settled it they should ask Churki to practice, on the morrow—“If Hammond can spare me,” Laurence was forced to add.

  “We might invite him to come aloft also,” Temeraire said, a notion which Laurence privately could not very much imagine that gentleman appreciating: Hammond spoke rather dismally of Churki, whose affections had evidently been bestowed upon a very unwilling subject, and he was regularly to be found chewing enormous wads of coca leaves, which he evidently considered a sovereign remedy for sea-sickness, even when the swell was not above ten feet.

  “I will have a word with Churki on the subject,” Temeraire continued. “I am sure it cannot be healthy for him to be always closeted inside that stuffy ship, any more than for you: there is a much better color in your face now. And perhaps you will stay on deck with me to-night, Laurence? I have heard the ship’s officers saying the hands would be turned up to sing, and a couple of the fellows exchanged books with Wampanoag’s officers, which they might be asked to lend us: I believe Immortalis’s Lieutenant Totenham has a new novel called Zastrozzi, which he has already finished, and pronounced remarkably good.”

  “By all means,” Laurence said, and though he found the novel, a dreadful gothic with an appalling villain, wholly distasteful, he was more than content with his company: if Temeraire had no great quarrel with the novel’s moral turpitude, which he seemed to find less shocking than peculiar, he roundly condemned its construction and what seemed to be several omitted chapters, so they had the pleasure of disliking it together, for their several reasons; and Temeraire did not treat him as an invalid, and shut his mouth on every other word. By the time they had finished out the novel, Laurence stealing an hour here and there from his studies as he might, he found he preferred Temeraire’s society above anyone else’s, dragon or no.

  “I am glad to have had something quite new,” Temeraire said, “even if it was not really satisfactory,” when they went aloft for exercise again: a morning flight had already become their settled routine, “and now we are sure to have something better to read soon: I think those are the Changshan Islands, over there.”

  Laurence put his glass up to his eye and looked out along the line of Temeraire’s gaze: a scattered archipelago of green and white islands, dotting the sea. Two days to Tien-sing harbor, if the wind stayed fair.

  The flooring of the palace was constructed peculiarly on two levels: the lower of hard smooth-polished stone, great flags of green marble shot with deep veins of gold, joined by the thinnest mortar, on which the dragons walked, and above this a network of s
lightly raised platforms of dark amber-colored wood and gold, for the people. Laurence had been given ample opportunity to examine it, in performing his reluctant obeisances before Crown Prince Mianning, who sat upon a great throne of gold on a dais set at the very end of the great hall. A great host of scarlet dragons and dark blue were gathered on either side of the aisle approaching the dais, with a pair of sleek beasts of pitch-black coloration one to either side of the throne.

  The value of the wooden floor, to those kneeling, was certainly very great, particularly those poor souls of rank so lowly they evidently were not permitted to raise their heads while royalty remained within the room. It had an echoing quality from the gap and the stone beneath, not unlike that of the hollow deck of a ship. Laurence found it comforting: the jewel-encrusted silken robes weighed on his shoulders enough to have made him feel a king in truth and not merely in play-act; he was grateful to have anything to remind him of his true and proper place.

  When he saw the round incendiary rolling across the planks beside him with its fuse smoking, that same habit came to his service: he recognized the rumbling clatter of its progress, and automatically put down the thick, low-hanging sleeve of the robe in the path of the ball, and snatched it hot from the ground.

  And there he was forced to stop an instant: the nearest windows, behind the throne, were latticed over with heavy wooden shutters. “Temeraire!” he called, without thinking: and indeed Temeraire was already in motion, reaching forward to hook with a talon a pair of the shutters and tearing them away. Laurence leapt forward upon the dais and flung the incendiary outside as though heaving a rock. Even as it flew, the charge took fire and erupted, flame licking in at the frame of the window; long splinters from the wood, smoldering, scattered upon the floor.