Blood of Tyrants (Temeraire #8) - Page 13

Chapter 13

LAURENCE COULD SEE GRANBY speaking softly with Harcourt and Berkley; they had trailed him to the edge of the escarpment and stood now at a distance together, all of them looking at him warily as though they imagined he might fling himself over, and as though they would have been sorry for it if he had. Even though he was a traitor—a convicted traitor. Even though he had carried aid and comfort to the French, deliberately, of his own free will, and undermined thereby a stroke which might have averted the invasion of Britain.

An appalling stroke, one which would have meant the slow and dreadful death of a thousand dragons or more, a deliberate plague-bearing—but notwithstanding this, a stroke which had been commanded by his officers, by his Government, and through them by his King. He had betrayed them all, and the invasion of his country might be laid at his door.

“Laurence,” Granby said, low, coming to his side, “—pray will you come back to my tent? Temeraire is frayed like a torn rag already, and he’ll be worse the longer you stand out here. He is watching you.”

Laurence did not answer; he could scarcely yet form thoughts in his own head. The worst of the matter was to be unable to recall what should have shaped his choice: he had committed no mere act of passion. He had acted with deliberation. He had also been pardoned, Temeraire had urgently told him, pardoned and even restored to the list of officers; but Laurence felt that he would have given up that pardon, given anything, only to feel again the sentiments that had driven him to such an extremity.

But he did not; he did not remember, and only now understood that he did not know himself any longer. He did not know how he ought to feel. Temeraire had evidently driven him to the act; a court-martial had condemned him; the Government had pardoned him. But none of these facts could tell Laurence whether he had condemned himself, or ought to, and whether he should long since have separated himself from Temeraire as ought a sailor shut his ears to the Sirens.

Granby gently took his arm, and Laurence after a moment let himself be drawn away. They walked slowly back across the encampment, past the watchful, suspicious looks of the red dragons. Laurence did not look towards Temeraire’s pavilion, but ducked into Granby’s tent; there he took the glass of strong rice liquor Granby offered him and swallowed it straightaway.

“I’m damned sorry,” Granby said, sitting on a chest. “We ought have found some other way to break the news to you, whatever Pettiforth and Hammond said; we must have known you could not go forever, not learning of it. I suppose we have all been telling ourselves you would remember, surely, any day now.” He leaned over with the bottle, and filled Laurence’s glass again.

Laurence took another hot, too-bitter swallow. “I think I can scarcely blame myself,” he said, low, “if having forgotten, I did not wish to remember this.” He downed the rest of the glass and asked abruptly, “I beg your pardon: may I ask your opinion of the act; of the—” He stopped; he did not put a word to it. He did not know what name to give it; he did not know why Granby should consider his feelings, in the least, nor tolerate his company, in the face of it. But he desperately wished to know.

Granby hesitated a moment and then said, “I haven’t anything to say, Laurence. I was damned glad the French had the cure, and so was any aviator worth his salt, in my opinion. They asked me, you know, if I’d had a part in it; they asked all of us, and all I could tell them was you wouldn’t have taken any help, and I wouldn’t have thought of it. And that’s too paltry for words. Anyway,” he added, “you wouldn’t have, either; Temeraire came up with the notion.”

“Yes,” Laurence said.

“I don’t deny it was ugly,” Granby said, “and I dare say it has given you a sad turn now, but—but do recall, we have all come about. Boney would have got his hands on the cure sooner or later anyway, and he would have come over anyway. And he’d be in England still if Temeraire hadn’t brought half the dragons out of the breeding grounds and to the war with him. You’ve your pardon, now, and you’re restored to the list.”

“A pardon cannot restore a man’s reputation,” Laurence said, “and still less his honor, if lost.” He was silent, and then said, “I suppose I was pardoned for Temeraire—that the Corps should continue to have the use of him.”

“Well,” Granby said.

Laurence nodded. He wondered bleakly if such a motive had kept him by Temeraire’s side; if he had clung to his post to save himself from hanging. But even as he had the thought, some instinct rejected it. He finished the glass and put it aside. “I beg your pardon,” he said quietly, “I cannot suppose I concealed my feelings from Temeraire at all well, and he was distressed already. I must go and speak with him.”

Temeraire huddled in his pavilion, as wretched as ever he had been; it seemed to him disaster followed directly on disaster. First their shipwreck; Laurence’s peculiar brain-fever; the assassination attempts which so nearly had succeeded; then the discovery of the opium, which might ruin everything—might prevent an alliance and leave them at a standstill. Mei had been very stiff and withdrawn, since then. She said she had accepted Temeraire’s assurances that he had known nothing of the smuggling, and neither had Laurence, but she had not wanted to try again for the egg since then; and all the other dragons in the encampment kept a cold distance.

But all that paled before this. Temeraire could not conceive how Laurence had forgotten the treason—the treason, which had so deeply wounded him. It seemed wretchedly unfair. If only Temeraire had known, he would never, never have said a word; how gladly he would have joined Laurence in forgetting, and Laurence need never have known anything about it ever again.

And if Laurence had forgotten the treason, surely he had forgotten everything else, as well. He had forgotten about the loss of his fortune. Temeraire would have to confess that to him, all over again; he would have to explain to Laurence that he had lost him ten thousand pounds, and that loss Temeraire had not repaired. Laurence would have all the pain of it afresh, and Temeraire should have to face all his justified blame. Temeraire huddled his head beneath his wing and tried not to think of it.

Forthing had tried to speak with him, half-an-hour ago; Temeraire had paid him no attention. He returned now with Ferris, who came by Temeraire’s head and said quietly, “Come, Temeraire; it will come out all right, you will see. The captain will come round. Will you eat something, or would you like Sipho to read to you?” He turned his head and called out the pavilion’s side, “Sipho! Will you bring that book over here, of poesy?” and added, “What you need is some distraction—”

“How can you speak of distraction to me?” Temeraire said, lifting his head up. “If I had paid better attention—if I had properly understood—oh! I am distracted, far worse than I ought to be. Where is Laurence?” He reared up his head, and tried to see him. Laurence had walked away across the camp, and his eyes—his eyes had looked half-blind—

“He is with Captain Granby,” Forthing said. “He will be all right, Temeraire; it’s all that knock on the head he took—”

“It is not!” Temeraire said. “I dare say he wished to forget, and whyever would he not wish to? I have lost him his fortune, and his rank, and his ship, and his wife—”

“What?” Ferris said. “Whenever was the captain married?”

“Never!” Temeraire said. “That is what I mean; and everyone will have it that nothing could be more splendid than marriage, and he has put it aside for my sake—that, and everything else, and he regrets it so that he has forgotten all of it, so he needn’t think of it.”

“Lord, Temeraire!” Forthing said. “You can’t suppose he has chosen to drop a hand of years out of his head.”

Temeraire turned his narrowed gaze sharp on Ferris. “Would you not, if you could?” he demanded. “Ferris! Would you not rather be shot of me? If you had anywhere else to go? It was my fault you were dismissed the service—”

Ferris flushed and said shortly, “I shouldn’t reproach you or the captain for any of it, if only you had asked me to take a part. I should have been happier hanged for such a cause than dismissed for a cowardly liar.”

“Oh,” Temeraire said. “But—but I am very glad you are not hanged,” he added awkwardly, “and I dare say if you had helped, you should have been, so I cannot be sorry for that.” His ruff drooped against his neck.

They were all silent a moment; Forthing stared at the ground, and Ferris, his cheeks still hot, looked away from the pavilion. Sipho came trotting in with the large scroll of poetry, and paused to eye them all doubtfully.

“I do not want it,” Temeraire said. “Pray take it away. I must do something,” he added, and heaved himself to his feet. “I will go flying, over that burnt town—I will see if I cannot find some trace of the rebels—”

“Wait!” Forthing said. “There’s no call for you to go venture yourself like that, and not in this mood, if you please. Let me go and fetch the captain—”

“No,” Temeraire said, fiercely; he could not bear to speak with Laurence at the moment, not when so many dreadful things might possibly be said. Whatever Ferris might feel, whatever Laurence himself had felt, before he had lost his memory, too plainly he did not feel those same things any longer. Laurence did not remember anything, and would be happier not remembering. What if Laurence were to come back and indeed tell him they should part? “No. I am going straightaway.”

He walked out of the pavilion; Ferris caught with a desperate leap at his foreleg, and scrambling went up the side to get hold of the breastplate chain, which Laurence ordinarily used to latch himself upon Temeraire’s back. “I am coming with you,” Ferris said. “Sipho, will you go and—”

“Oh!” Temeraire said, and caught Sipho and Forthing and put them up onto his back as well. “You will all come with me, and not run tattling; I do not see any reason that anyone ought go and tell Laurence. If we do not find anything, there is no reason at all.”

“A flight won’t hurt him,” Ferris said to Forthing in an undertone.

“I can’t like it in the least,” Forthing said, hissing back. “Half this camp is ready to leap on us and tear us to pieces for the least excuse, and if we did find some rebels, they’d like to do the same. We oughtn’t let him go anywhere away, and without a word to anyone.”

“These fellows are hunting the rebels, aren’t they?” Ferris said. “If there were anything to be found at that town, they would have found it by now. We’ll go for a flight there and back, and then likely enough he’ll come down and let Sipho read to him awhile.”

“I don’t think they have been looking very hard,” Sipho said unexpectedly, in his still-high voice, “when they think we are guilty, and want us to be,” which gave Forthing and Ferris both pause; Sipho added, “I don’t mind going to have a look, either, and seeing some more of this country. But I don’t think Demane will like it if I go off without him for a long while,” in rather cheerful tones: he did not have a very great distaste for upsetting his brother, who was somewhat given to a smothering and anxious degree of affection.

“Well, I am going, and so are you,” Temeraire said, “so latch on your carabiners,” and he delayed only a moment longer before he threw himself aloft. Privately, his thoughts were urgently turning, even as he beat up and turning flew away from the encampment. Surely it was not himself, but Laurence who required distraction; Laurence ought above all things be distracted from thinking of his losses. Perhaps General Fela’s men had missed something, some sign—perhaps he would find some trace of the rebels. If only Temeraire returned in some victorious accomplishment, perhaps having smashed a rebel army or at least discovered one, Laurence could hardly reply to it with chiding, with a desire to part from him.

The destroyed village, when he reached it, no longer smoldered; the last of the fires had gone out. The opium had been taken away, and the streets cleared; now it was merely abandoned to time. There was no trace, so far as Temeraire could see, of rebels. There were no weapons scattered, and when he flew in widening circles around, the old worn road bore few signs of any traffic at all: the stones were overgrown with grass.

But Temeraire paid no mind to Ferris and Forthing already importuning him to go back to camp; he did not mean to swallow defeat so easily. “After all,” he said, “the rebels would not keep their opium in a village they did not come to, now and again; and if they have not come by road, I suppose they must have dragons as well.”

“If they have, all the more reason we ought go back to camp and not encounter them on our own,” Ferris said.

“Well, we do not know for certain that they do,” Temeraire said hastily. He was already aloft again and hovering, looking around at the nearby mountains, trying to decide where he might have liked to perch, if he had been coming to and from the village, or wished to observe it unseen. “What do you think of that mountain, over there—the one with the double ridge. I suppose anyone might have hidden between the two.”

Ferris had a glass in his belt, and he took it out and looked as Temeraire flew towards the ridge. “He isn’t wrong,” he said to Forthing, and passed him the glass; but Sipho was the only one who was of any real use, for as Temeraire flew along the ridge he said, “Is that a trail, over there?” pointing downwards.

It was a trail: with at one end a clearing full of gnawed bones, and fresh claw-marks on the rock. “We must get back to camp,” Forthing said. “Temeraire, you must see—”

“Why, those could be anyone’s markings,” Temeraire said, outwardly dismissive; inside his heart leapt with excitement. By the signs there had not been very many dragons, perhaps even only one, and not very large; he was sure he could win out over one, or even a few. “We cannot merely waste everyone’s time. If you like, you may wait here, and I will go and have a look.”

“Give over,” Ferris said to Forthing, grimly. “He’s looking for a fight. Have you anything to make a light with, or some noise? Blast this notion of not having Celestials in harness; we ought to have half-a-dozen flares to hand.”

Forthing had his pistols. “Whatever are you doing?” Temeraire said in irritation, looking round, as he shot them off one after another into the air. “If there is anyone, you will warn them off.”

“I hope I do, before you run yourself into their teeth,” Forthing returned, and he fired again. He was sitting on Temeraire’s back directly between his wing-blades, where Temeraire could not conveniently reach around to stop him.

Temeraire snorted in irritation, and beat on quicker following the trail, and coming round had to pull up hard as it descended abruptly between two jagged rising walls of stone. He caught an updraft and threw himself up along the wall and caught onto the summit so that he might take a quick look over, unsuspected from below—he did not at all mean to be foolishly reckless, whatever Forthing and Ferris might think.

And then “Oh,” Temeraire said, in astonishment, and pulled himself up higher to peer over the ridge and into the valley below. “Arkady? Whatever are you doing here?”

Arkady stood in the midst of a small encampment otherwise hastily and very recently abandoned: tents left pitched and a fire-pit still smoking; ragged bundles of supplies everywhere and one bleating sheep staked out at the far end of a gully.

“Why am I here?” Arkady said. “I am looking for you, and see what it has got me.” He did present an appearance very unlike himself, drooping and his grey hide dull and grimed with dust.

Temeraire landed beside him, baffled extremely. The last he had seen Arkady, they had parted on the shores of Britain, not long before Temeraire had embarked on his transportation and taken ship with Laurence for New South Wales. Arkady and his feral band of dragons had been persuaded to take up service with the Aerial Corps in exchange for a regular payment of cattle; but they were natives of the Pamirs, nearly two thousand miles west of China. If he had decided to throw over the Corps, Temeraire could not imagine why he would have come here; and in any case, he was still under harness.

Under harness, and something else: “Whatever is that thing upon your back?” Temeraire said, nosing at it cautiously. Temeraire had never seen its like: iron bars linked together in a long chain, the ends of two bars pierced through Arkady’s wings, and others dangling down to Arkady’s back—and then Temeraire drew his head back in horrified disgust: the ends were barbed spikes, and they had been planted into Arkady’s flesh.

“They put it upon me,” Arkady said, “so I cannot fly; it is dreadful if I even move my wings a little. Take it off me at once!” And he leaned against Temeraire miserably.

Forthing and Ferris had already leapt cautiously from Temeraire’s back to his, to inspect the chains. “I don’t dare touch that,” Forthing said to Ferris, “do you? We want a surgeon, double-quick: I dare say we could spoil him for ever flying again, if we took it out wrong.”

Ferris was looking with grim disgust at the bindings also. “We ought try and get the links open, if we can,” he said. “Then at least he won’t be forever pulling on it.”

“But who put it on you?” Temeraire said, still bewildered, “and what did you want with me? And if you were looking for me, why would you be here? I was not here, until presently; are you saying you have just come from Peking?”

“Why do you say such ridiculous things?” Arkady said. “As though I meant to be here, in this dreadful condition! We were going to Peking: there was some letter you sent, that you meant to go there, or so Admiral Roland said. And as for what did I want with you, how dare you ask me such a thing. What has happened to my egg?”

“Your egg!” Temeraire said, with a guilty start of remembering.

Arkady was rousing up despite his miserable state, and he blazed on reproachfully. “I left it in your charge, on that great ship, to take to New South Wales; then I hear you are in Brazil instead, and going on to China. Why are you not there, keeping watch upon it?”

“Oh,” Temeraire said, writhing a little in shame and discomfort; he did not know how to tell Arkady what had happened. His egg had been treated with the greatest of care; but that had not availed anything: it had hatched out Caesar, a most disagreeable dragon, who had taken as captain none other than the paltry Jeremy Rankin. “I did assure Caesar,” Temeraire offered desperately in his own defense, “that he needn’t take on anyone he didn’t like; that I should not have permitted Rankin to force harness on him—only Caesar would have it, because he learnt that Rankin is the son of an earl, and, I believe, very rich—”

“Ah! Why did you not say so at once?” Arkady closed his eyes in relief. “Then all is well. I am sorry I doubted you,” he said handsomely. And by way of heaping coals of fire on Temeraire’s conscience went on, “Only some very strange stories came to us, that you had lost an egg—that someone had stolen it from under your nose—”

Temeraire squirmed even more wretchedly. He had indeed lost an egg to thieves, though not Arkady’s, and it was not much excuse that he had found it safely hatched in the end; the egg had not hatched in British hands, and anything might have happened to it during the long dreadful chase across the desert. He seized upon the quickest excuse to change the subject. “Well, I did not lose your egg, at all,” he said hastily, “and I am very happy to have been able to reassure you on the subject. So that is why you came from England?”

“Yes,” Arkady said, “for Wringe is brooding again,” triumphantly, “and you may be sure we were not going to let go another egg, when the first had not been properly looked after. But now that it seems there was right care taken, I suppose we will let the officers have it, after all.”

“Well, I am sure they will look after it properly,” Temeraire said, relieved to have escaped with so little of the scolding he guiltily felt he deserved, “but now pray tell me, how did you come here? I suppose you took transport to Guangzhou?”

He had already worked out the picture: surely General Fela’s men had seen Arkady being taken prisoner by the rebels, and had misunderstood; they had thought he was bringing the opium, when instead he had been their helpless prisoner.

But Arkady said, “No, of course not! It is eight months at sea; there was no time for that! I suppose you would have gone somewhere else by the time we came, the way you have been running all over the world. We came by the Pamirs, and to Xian, because we thought this would be a quicker way to Peking. Instead here I am all chained up, and you have gone on somewhere else.”

“I do not see that you have any business complaining about my having gone on,” Temeraire said, a bit indignantly, “as I have gone on here, and otherwise I dare say the rebels would have kept you chained up here forever.”

“Rebels?” Arkady said. “What rebels?”

“The White Lotus,” Temeraire said, “who took you prisoner. But it will all be all right now,” he added, “for this proves you were not bringing them opium: if you were, they would certainly not have chained you up.”

“I was not bringing opium to anyone, but I do not know anything about this White Lotus, or any rebels,” Arkady said. “I was chained up by some great red dragons, a dozen at least. I fought them very bravely, but there were too many of them: they held me down for the men to put those chains on me, though we were only flying through and asking them the way to Peking.”

“Red dragons?” Temeraire said, puzzling. “Like the dragons in the army?”

“Yes,” Arkady said, “in jeweled collars, and their men shouted at us a long time, but I do not understand how they talk, nor do I want to.”

“What is he saying?” Forthing said, looking up from his search of the camp, as Sipho came scrambling out of one of the tents with an odd blade in his hand, wide at the end and narrow at the hilt, and brought it over to them.

“Look what I found,” Sipho said. “There are more of them, inside.”

“That might do, to pry these open,” Ferris said, reaching for it.

“That is not what I mean!” Sipho said. “These are the same kind of swords those fellows used when they tried to murder the captain.”

“Oh!” Temeraire said, whipping his head around. “Oh, these are not the rebels; these are the assassins! Where did they go?” Temeraire demanded of Arkady. “How many of them were there—”

“How many of who?” Arkady said, opening his eyes again to slits and glaring sullenly: he had drooped weakly against Temeraire’s side again. “I did not count them: there were enough to chain me up. Hundreds, I suppose! Why do you not get this thing off my back so I can fly again?”

A low rumbling of distant thunder came, and came, and came, growing louder and more near. Temeraire looked up in alarm, and saw the narrow shelf of rock above them crumbling. “Look out!” Ferris called out, but there was no time to get him aboard, to get any of them aboard: the rock was coming down in a roaring torrent. Temeraire lunged and put himself above Sipho and Ferris, and scraped Forthing in quickly beneath him as well with one foreleg; then the rockslide was upon them, boulders pounding Temeraire’s hips and back painfully as a rain of pelting pebbles and sand roared down with them. Arkady pressed up against his side, taking less of the brunt though squalling furiously nonetheless.

The noise died away first; then the rocks settled, though the air was still full of choking, clouding dust. Temeraire sneezed and sneezed, and coughed, and said hoarsely to Arkady, “Do stop yowling; it does not make matters any better.” He shook his head to cast off the worst of the dust; he would have liked to wipe his eyes against his forelegs, but the pebbles and stones had buried him up to his withers.

“You are not wearing this monstrosity,” Arkady returned, “and you are half out of the rocks,” with some justice, for the rocks cascading over Temeraire’s back had covered Arkady to the base of his neck, so only his head and his wing-tips poked out. “Aren’t you strong enough to heave out of them and get us loose? It hurts,” he added plaintively.

“I am sure it does hurt; I am not at all comfortable myself,” Temeraire said. “And I dare say I might get us out,” he added, although he was not in the least certain; he felt very unpleasantly pinned, “but I cannot risk shifting these rocks. I am sure if I moved they would kill Ferris and Sipho, and Forthing, in a trice. There is nothing to do for it but wait until someone should find us,” he finished glumly.

He did not in the least look forward to being found in such an absurd position, having done nothing whatsoever heroic, and found only Arkady, who was of no use to anyone; and Temeraire supposed that now the assassins would have fled to some new hiding place long before he should ever be dug out.

“I do not see why that mountain should have chosen now of all times to fall down on us,” he added resentfully, and looking up saw some men peering down upon him from the ruined summit: men in soldiers’ uniforms. “Oh!” he said. “You there,” he called, raising his voice, “send word to the camp—”

“Why are you talking to them?” Arkady said. “Hurry and get loose, and never mind about your men, I am sure they will be all right! Those are them, those are the ones who put these chains on me!”

Temeraire jerked his head around to stare at Arkady. “What?” he said. “But those are soldiers from the army—” and broke off, in understanding and in swelling wrath. “I will kill General Fela, I will,” he vowed.

“You will not kill anyone if you are stuck under those rocks,” Arkady said, “Quick, quick!” and looked with fear as the soldiers began to pick their way down the loosened slope, with long sharp pole-arms in their hands.

“And you have seen nothing of him since?” Laurence asked, frowning.

O’Dea shrugged. “Mr. Ferris was aboard, and Mr. Forthing, too,” he said, “and that young black fellow. I suppose they may have run into a thunderstorm, or gone afoul of some mountain current; ah, it’s sure there’s many a dragon’s bones littering these peaks, Captain. And those pernicious rebels out there somewhere, no doubt looking for a choice target.”

“Yes, thank you, O’Dea,” Laurence said. The more likely, and perhaps worse possibility, was that Temeraire had fled the camp in misery, and wished to avoid Laurence entirely; that Temeraire did not wish to return. Laurence stood a moment in the pavilion, worrying the straps of his well-worn harness in his hands, the carabiners hanging empty. He should not have cared so much as he did; his heart ought not have been bound up so completely, and yet he could not but recognize that it was. There, perhaps, was his answer: loving Temeraire, and seeing in him all dragonkind, he had not been able to take refuge behind some comforting fiction of their being mere beasts. He wondered now that he had ever thought them so. It had outweighed treason, in his heart; he was not sure he had been wrong.

He looked hesitantly over the camp. They were still under guard, the scarlet dragons watching from their posts, and the British dragons had not tried to go on maneuvers. Chu had evidently ordered patrols of the region, but only by the other dragons under his command. Laurence had seen them overhead, flying in small groups.

To take Iskierka up, or Lily, or one of the heavy-weights, would at once be provoking and leave their own party too bare. But one of the Yellow Reapers was sleeping near-by, Immortalis, and his captain, Little, was sitting beside the drowsing beast and sketching a little upon a writing-desk—an illustration of a Chinese pistol, which he had evidently got somehow from one of the soldiers, perhaps in exchange for his own. He had a neat hand; Laurence paused and Little looked up from his work and straightened.

“Captain Laurence,” he said, formally.

“Captain,” Laurence said, “I would not disturb you, but Temeraire has been gone some time, and I—I have some reason for believing him in some distress. May I presume so far as to ask you to take me up in search of him?”

“Ah,” Little said, and was silent, obviously hesitant. Laurence recalled too late that Little had been awkward about him and had avoided conversation whenever conversation might be avoided. Easy to understand, now: Little of course had known of the treason which Laurence had committed, even when Laurence himself had not. Little had known the stain upon his character, and perhaps cared more than the other aviators; because Granby sympathized, and Harcourt, did not mean they all did so.

“I beg your pardon,” Laurence said. “I have not the least desire to impose on you; pray consider the request withdrawn.” He would have gone, at once, but Little rose hastily.

“No, no,” Little said. “I do beg your pardon. Of course we ought to go and find him.”

They had f