Blood of Tyrants (Temeraire #8) - Page 8

Part II

Chapter 8

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 rest 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 slightly 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.

Laurence ducked away from that furious hail, and only belatedly realized his shelter was none other than the throne. “What was that?” Temeraire said, and added, “ow!” in protest: the explosion had ceased, and Laurence looked around to see the dragon’s side sprouting half-a-dozen red-enameled splinters the size of rapiers, dug in between the scales.

The first moments of blank surprise gone, abruptly the guards sprang into action: they surrounded the crown prince bodily, and Laurence found himself enveloped in their protective ranks as well. A deep-voiced man somewhere beyond them was shouting orders to get the prince away, to hide him—

“Laurence!” he heard Granby shout, but Laurence had no opportunity to answer over the noise: the enormous orange-red dragons in their armored plates, who had been arrayed at the back of the room, were running forward to make formation around the throne: smashing to pieces the wooden floor, bowling men and dragons to either side in their haste: there were twelve of them, heavy-weights all. Four of the beasts seized the elaborate carved borders of the dais, which Laurence had thought mere decoration, but now seemed to be intended almost as handles. A shout came; that deep voice—one of the dragons, Laurence belatedly realized—counted three, and they heaved; the entire dais swayed up into the air and they were moving, the dragons’ heavy four-taloned feet thumping upon the ground as they began to run.

Laurence, holding on to the throne for very life, had only time to throw one startled look back at Temeraire, who had been shouldered out of the way by the pack and was only just righting himself. The back wall of the palace fell before the red dragons as they bulled forward; it went down not smashed but in a single piece, as though by design; then there were wings everywhere blotting out the sky, the translucent skin glowing orange-red with the sun above them, and with another heave they were aloft. The palace grounds fell away: off the side of the dais, Laurence could see the yellow roofs glowing in the late-morning sun, and the silver-grey brick of the vast plazas, rapidly dwindling away below.

Laurence said to Prince Mianning, “Where are they taking us?” He supposed it was a violation of all etiquette, but at present there was no-one to object to that: they were quite alone upon the dais. The platform was carried low, beneath the dragons’ sides; each one clutched a handle, and their wings beat wildly overhead. Laurence could not even catch sight of a single officer, nor see the dragons’ heads.

Mianning’s face was composed, despite the assassination attempt and his having been swept pell-mell away in such a fashion. “To the Summer Palace,” he answered, as calmly as though he had only gone for a pleasant stroll, but then he paused: he leaned forward from the throne and looked down at the ground that spilled away beneath them, and then towards the position of the sun.

Laurence caught sight of his look, of the frown that suddenly touched the crown prince’s forehead. Mianning put his hand on the hilt of his long blade: though the sheath was adorned with jewels and gold, when Mianning drew a few inches of the blade to loosen it, they gleamed good serviceable steel. Laurence watched him: he missed his own sword painfully at the moment. “What is it?” he asked grimly.

“We are being taken in the wrong direction,” Mianning said.

He fell silent, and Laurence could think of nothing to propose. He glanced over the side: they were already past the city limits, and the pale green fields of spring spilling away below were so far distant they were merely squares upon a chessboard. There was nothing to be done but wait. Laurence looked back: was there a small speck that might have been a dragon, to their rear? He could not be sure: it might as easily have been a bird. Temeraire would surely have followed them as soon as he was able, but he might have been held back somehow, or misdirected.

“Did you see the assassin?” Laurence said to Mianning, who regarded him thoughtfully a long moment; Laurence did not know what to make of his expression, until Mianning said, “He was of your own party: he wore Western clothes.”

“What?” Laurence said. “That is impossible. Hammond, myself, your own servant Gong Su—Captain Granby, Captain Berkley—that was the sum of our party. It is perfectly impossible any one of them should have done such a thing. We were searched, in any case, before we came into the room, and required to leave our swords.”

“And yet six of you entered,” Mianning said. He raised a hand, when Laurence would have protested. “You misunderstand me. The sixth man was surely introduced to your party as you entered the pavilion. If his attack had succeeded, and I had been slain, your party would surely have been blamed.”

Laurence paused. “And will be blamed, if, for instance, we should be found to have died of wounds taken in the attempt?” he asked grimly. Mianning inclined his head in answer.

Hammond had been deeply anxious over the preparations for this mission not least because its outcome was by no means certain: a substantial conservative faction of the Imperial court passionately opposed anything they called foreign adventures, and had made an attempt to unseat Mianning as the Imperial heir on the occasion of their last visit. It had not occurred to Laurence that this passion might extend so far as to openly murder their crown prince, but he could imagine no-one else who might have arranged such an incident. Napoleon might have a long arm, but not so long as this.

“Lord Bayan was given the right to oversee the preparations for our meeting,” Mianning said. “The conservative party raised a great protest at your coming at all within the walls of the Forbidden City, and suggested I am excessively partial towards your nation, and might be inclined to allow you too much license.” He looked towards the sun, which lay ahead of their flight. “His estate lies west of the city.”

The dragons carried them towards the lowering sun for nearly an hour. At last they began a descent over what seemed to Laurence a sprawling country estate: a great wilderness of gardens in the Chinese style—meandering paths and great pitted boulders amidst running streams crossed by graceful arched bridges, and a large pavilion which might have accommodated a horde of dragons beside the house.

Their dais was set down in a wide courtyard with great care, and a gentleman dressed in embroidered robes of great magnificence came out of the house to meet them, prostrating himself with all correct formality. “Lord Bayan,” Mianning said, calm but watchful; there were a dozen blank-faced guards on either side, besides of course the dragons.

“My humble abode is honored beyond measure by your visit, Your Highness,” Lord Bayan said. “I am full of desolation that the peace and tranquility of your days should have been profaned by so desperate an attack upon you by the Westerners, whom I am told have infested the palace grounds like so many evil termites gnawing away at live wood.” If this speech were not enough to make his position plain, the look he gave Laurence, sidelong, would have sufficed alone: a mingling of disgust and disdain. And beneath that, something of terror; there was a dew of sweat scattered upon the top of his broad shaven forehead, and he had the look of a man who knows he has gone too far.

“My poor home will be your shelter,” Bayan continued, “and I pledge my own life to your safety from attack. I have three most beautiful young concubines, all virgin, who will attend you, and a troupe of actors are in attendance for your entertainment.”

“We are indebted to you for your concern for our well-being, and our brother’s,” Mianning said. “We must at once however write to our father, who even now shall have heard such news as will make him concerned for our health.”

“You shall be given pen and ink at once, Your Highness,” Bayan said; after a few more stilted pleasantries and fencing exchanges they were with inexorable courtesy escorted inside the house with the guards trailing, deep within to a spacious chamber, nobly appointed, with a great writing-desk. Brushes and ink and paper were already laid out waiting. Mianning seated himself as easily as though he were in his own house and favorite chair, and taking up the brush began to write.

Lord Bayan hesitated, but after a moment kowtowed again and left them, the practiced smile already falling from his face as he went out the door. They were left alone.

Laurence himself remained standing by the desk. Mianning had given him the shorter of his blades; it was hidden yet beneath his robes, thrust into the waist of his trousers—for what use a single blade might be.

Mianning tapped his brush against the inkwell, noisily; Laurence glanced down and saw upon the sheet a message written in clear simple characters: Having gone to such lengths, they likely cannot let me leave alive.

Laurence inclined his chin halfway to his collarbone slowly, only once, to show he had heard and seen. Any act so overt as this would put the conspirators far beyond the pale, and surely demand reprisals. Except of course, if their plot succeeded. Laurence met Mianning’s eyes, in defiance of all Hammond’s laborious tutelage on the subject: in the moment they were no longer marionetting the forms of Imperial etiquette, representatives of states, but mortal prisoners together, and in that exchanged look shared the understanding of their likely fate.

Too many witnesses had seen them carried away alive, surely not all of them suborned, and the bomb had not wreaked much damage inside the building; Bayan could not easily claim they had been brought to him already dead, victims of the assassin. But some other deadly outcome might now be engineered: perhaps Mianning murdered by Laurence’s own hand, the supposed culmination of a British plot to slay the crown prince, and Laurence slain in reprisal and wrath by Bayan’s guards.

That would be a good story, and the Emperor would have little alternative but to accept such an explanation on its face to keep the peace in his own court, to gain the time for the laborious process of grooming another heir. And in doing so, he would be forced as well to treat the British as the murderers of his son and heir, despite their having come under pretense of seeking friendship: betrayers of the worst kind. There would be no alliance; instead the reverse entirely, all the wrath of the Imperial armies flung upon their party and on the Potentate in Tien-sing harbor, and every last man of their company put to torture and death for so outrageous a crime.

Laurence went to the door and looked out of the room. Two dozen guards were lined against the walls to either side. Too many to fight: if they wished, they could put a knife in Laurence’s fist, close their hands around his arm, and force him to thrust the blade into Mianning’s breast. They did not meet his eyes, nor even turn their heads to look at him. He closed the door again.

Mianning was taking his scribbled note off the scroll-handles and putting it to the lamp to burn; Laurence looked at it catching the flames, at the oil, at the jug of rice wine standing; and then he took up another of the blank scrolls from the table and unrolled it into a long sheet at his feet. Mianning watched him, and then silently joined him: soon they had laid all the scrolls down in rows stretching from one end of the long chamber to the other. There were two lamps burning in the room. They each took one and poured the oil out, spilling it in a glossy line across the parchment, and after that splashed on the contents of the jug of wine, and dropped the first burning sheet down. Blue flame went leaping across the wooden floor.

They took scraps of flame, burning pieces of paper, and spread the fire to the delicate scrolls hanging on the walls, to the silken draperies and furnishings. Smoke began to fill the room; the furniture, beneath its enamel, was catching. Laurence covered his mouth with a fold of his robe and kept to the work; the fire was climbing to a steady yellow-red crackling in a few corners of the room as the seasoned wood took light. His face was streaming sweat already, and Mianning’s was made distant and blurred by the smoke: Laurence had the strange unpleasant itching of a memory he could not quite grasp, something he should have remembered—flame and smoke, voices shouting, a crammed struggling belowdecks. A ship in flames, a ship burning; but he could not remember her name, or what had happened, or when.

He pushed the sensation aside and flung cushions down into the building blaze, and then at last the door opened: the nearest guard looked in and cried out. Others came running to the doorway: Laurence leapt for the narrow entry with the short sword in his hand and stabbed the first man coming through in one eye, and got away his longer sword. Mianning took the other side of the door, his own blade drawn. They took the first three easily and backed the rest away from the door for a moment’s hesitation: realizing the opposition that faced them, the guards began to group themselves together for a united rush, to bull through the door.

But the smoke was thickening now, and the sickening charred smell of human flesh rose as corpses fell amid the kindling: the opened door had fed the fire with a rush of air, and flames were now climbing the walls, leaping for the rafters. The house had caught, well and truly. Laurence drew a gulp of air from the doorway and then, catching Mianning by the arm, pointed to the fallen guards. Together they stripped off swiftly the slain guards’ helms and retreated into the grey haze of smoke even as more guards came pouring through the door.

Laurence threw off his elaborate robes behind the veil of smoke, dropping them into another corner of the fire. The milling guards were shouting to one another as they swiftly organized a defense: already buckets of water slopping were being brought from the kitchens. The disorder was great. Laurence was dizzy and ill with smoke and struggling not to breathe; stinging burning cinders were falling into his hair, onto his bare chest and shoulders. He jammed on his helm, saw Mianning doing so as well beside him; Mianning caught his arm and they pushed out into the hallway together through the din of shouting and panic, and snatched empty buckets from the serving-boys who carried them.

They ran through the hallway towards the back of the house, where more servants came staggering under tubs and buckets; shouts