NAOMI NOVIK

The Tongues of Serpents

Table of Contents

PART I

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

PART II

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

PART III

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Epilogue

By the same author

Copyright

About the Publisher

PART I

Chapter One

There were few streets in the main port of Sydney which deserved the name, besides the one main thoroughfare, and even that bare packed dirt, lined only with a handful of small and wretched buildings that formed all the permanence of the colony. Tharkay turned off from this and led the way down a cramped, irregularly arranged alleyway between two wooden-slat buildings to a courtyard full of men drinking, in surly attitudes, with no roof but a tarpaulin.

Along one side of the courtyard, the further from the kitchens, the convicts sat in their drab and faded duck trousers, dusty from the fields and quarries and weighted down with fatigue; along the other, small parties of men from the New South Wales Corps watched with candidly unfriendly faces as Laurence and his companions seated themselves at a small table near the edge of the establishment.

Besides their being strangers, Granby’s coat drew the eye:bottle-green was not in the common way, and though he had put off the worst excesses of gold braid and buttons with which Iskierka insisted upon adorning him, the embroidery at cuffs and collar could not be so easily detached. Laurence wore plain brown, himself: to make a pretence of standing in the Aerial Corps now was wholly out of the question, of course, and if his dress raised questions concerning his situation, that was certainly no less than honest, as neither he nor anyone else had yet managed to work out what that ought in any practical sense to be.

‘I suppose this fellow will be here soon enough,’ Granby said, unhappily; he had insisted on coming, but not from any approval of the scheme.

‘I fixed the hour at six,’ Tharkay answered, and then turned his head: one of the younger officers had risen from the tables and was coming towards them.

Eight months aboard ship with no duties of his own and shipmates nearly united in their determination to show disdain had prepared Laurence for the scene which, with almost tiresome similarity, unfolded yet again. The insult itself was irritating for demanding some answer, more than anything else; it had not the power to wound in the mouth of a coarse young boor, stinking of rum and visibly unworthy to stand among even the shabby ranks of a military force alternately called the Rum Corps. Laurence regarded Lieutenant Agreuth only with distaste, and said briefly, ‘Sir, you are drunk; go back to your table, and leave us at ours.’

There the similarity ended, however: ‘I don’t see why I,’ Agreuth said, his tongue tangling awkwardly, so he had to stop and repeat himself, speaking with excessive care, ‘why I should listen to anything out of a piss-pot whoreson traitor’s fucking mouth—’

Laurence stared, and heard the tirade with mounting incredulity; he would have expected the gutter language out of a dockyard pickpocket in a temper, and hardly knew how to hear it from an officer. Granby had evidently less difficulty, and sprang to his feet saying, ‘By God, you will apologize, or for a ha’penny I will have you flogged through the streets.’

‘I would like to see you try it,’ Agreuth said, and leaning over spat into Granby’s glass; Laurence stood too late to catch Granby’s arm from throwing it into Agreuth’s face.

That was of course an end to even the barest hope or pretence of civility; Laurence instead pulled Granby back by his arm, out of the way of Agreuth’s wildly swinging fist, and letting go struck back with the same hand, clenched, as it came again at his face.

He did not hold back; if brawling was outrageous, it looked inevitable, and he would as soon have it over with quickly. So the blow was armed with all the strength built up from childhood on rope-lines and harness, and Laurence knocked Agreuth directly upon the jaw: the lieutenant lifted half an inch from the ground, his head tipping back and leading the rest of his frame. Stumbling a few steps as he came down, he pitched face-front onto the floor straight through the neighbouring table, to the accompaniment of several shattering glasses and the stink of cheap rum.

That might have been enough, but Agreuth’s companions, though officers and some of them older and more sober than he, showed no reluctance in flinging themselves at once into the fray thus begun. The men at the overturned table, sailors on an East India merchantman, were as quick to take offence at the disruption of their drinking; and a mingled crowd of sailors and labourers and soldiers, all better than three-quarters of the way drunk, and a great scarcity of women, as compared to what would have been found in nearly every other dockyard house of the world which Laurence knew, was a powder keg ready for the slow match in any case. The rum had not finished sinking between the paving stones before men were rising from their chairs all around them.

Another officer of the New South Wales Corps threw himself on Laurence: a bigger man than Agreuth, sodden and heavy with liquor. Laurence twisted himself loose and heaved him down onto the floor, shoving him as well as could be managed under the table. Tharkay was already with a practical air seizing the bottle of rum by the neck, and when another man lunged ‐ this one wholly unconnected with Agreuth, and by all appearances simply pleased to fight anyone at all – Tharkay clubbed him upon the temple swiftly.

Granby had been seized upon by three men at once: two of them, Agreuth’s fellows, for spite, and one who was trying his best only to get at the jewelled sword and belt around his waist. Laurence struck the pickpocket on the wrist, and seizing him by the scruff of the collar flung him stumbling across the courtyard; Granby exclaimed, then, and turning back Laurence found him ducking from a knife, dirty and rust-speckled, being stabbed at his eyes.

‘By God, have you taken all leave of your senses?’ Laurence said, and seized upon the knife-wielder’s hand with both his own, twisting the blade away, while Granby efficiently knocked down the third man and turned back to help him. The melee was spreading rapidly now, helped along by Tharkay, who was coolly throwing the toppled chairs across the room, knocking over still more of the tables, and flinging glasses of rum into the faces of the custom as they rose indignantly.

Laurence and Granby and Tharkay were only three together, and thanks to the advance of the New South Wales officers well-surrounded, leaving the irritated men no other target but those same officers; a target on which the convicts in particular seemed not loath to vent their spleen. This was not a very coherently directed fury, however, and when the officer before Laurence had been clubbed down with a heavy stool, the choleric assailant behind him swung it with equal fervour at Laurence himself.

Laurence slipped upon the wet floorboards, catching the stool away from his face, and went to one knee in a puddle. He shoved the man’s leg out from under him, and was rewarded with the full weight of man and stool landing upon his shoulder, so they went sprawling together upon the floor.

Splinters drove into Laurence’s side, where his shirt had ridden up from his breeches and come wholly loose, and the big convict, swearing at him, struck him upon the side of his face with a clenched fist. Laurence tasted blood as his lip tore upon his tooth, a dizzying haze over his sight. They were rolling across the floor, and Laurence had no very clear recollection of the next few moments; he was pounding at the other man savagely, a blow with every turn, knocking his head against the boards over and over. It was a vicious, animal struggle, insensible of both feeling and thought; he knew only distantly as he was kicked, by accident, or struck against the wall or some overturned piece of furniture.

The limp unconsciousness of his opponent freed him at last from the frenzy, and Laurence with an effort opened his clenched hand and let go the man’s hair, and pushed himself up from the floor, staggering. They had fetched up against the wooden counter before the kitchen. Laurence reaching up clutched at the edge and pulled himself to his feet, aware more than he wished to be, all at once, of a deep stabbing pain in his side, and stinging cuts in his cheek and his hands. He fumbled at his face and pulled a long sliver of broken glass free, tossing it upon the counter.

The fighting was beginning already to die down – not the length of an engagement, on the deck of a ship, where there was something to be gained. Laurence limping across the room made it to Granby’s side: Agreuth and one of his fellow officers had clawed their way back up onto their feet and were yet grappling weakly with him in a corner, vicious but half-exhausted, so they were swaying back and forth more than wrestling.

Coming in, Laurence heaved Granby free, and leaning on each other they stumbled out of the courtyard and into the narrow, stinking alleyway outside, which yet seemed cool and fresh out from under the makeshift tarpaulin roof; a fine misting rain was falling. Laurence leaned gratefully against the far wall made cool and light by the coating of dew, ignoring with a practised stomach the man a few steps away who was heaving the contents of his belly into the gutters. A couple of women coming down the alleyway lifted their skirts over the trickle of muck and continued on past them all without hesitation, not even looking in at the disturbance of the tavern courtyard.

‘My God, you look a fright,’ Granby said, dismally.

‘I have no doubt,’ Laurence said, gingerly touching at his face. ‘And I have two ribs cracked, I dare say. I am sorry to say, John, you are not in much better case.’

‘No, I am sure not,’ Granby said. ‘We will have to take a room somewhere, if anyplace will let us through the door, to wash up; what Iskierka would do seeing me in such a state, I have no notion.’

Laurence had a very good notion what Iskierka would do, and also Temeraire, and between them there would not be much left of the colony to speak of afterwards.

‘Well,’ Tharkay said, joining them as he wrapped his neck-cloth around his own bloodied hand, ‘I believe I saw our man look into the establishment, a little while ago, but I am afraid he thought better of coming in under the circumstances. I will have to inquire after him to arrange another meeting.’

‘No,’ Laurence said, blotting his lip and cheek with his handkerchief. ‘No, I thank you; I think we can dispense with his information. I have seen all I need to, in order to form an opinion of the discipline of the colony, and its military force.

‘Temeraire sighed and toyed with the last bites of kangaroo stew – the meat had a pleasantly gamy sort of flavour, not unlike deer, and he had found it at first a very satisfying change from fish, after the long sea-voyage. But he could only really call it palatable when cooked rare, which did not offer much variety, and in stew it became quite stringy and tiresome, especially as the supply of spice left even more to be desired.

There were some very nice cattle in a pen which he could see, from his vantage upon the harbour promontory, but evidently they were much too dear here for the Corps to provide. And Temeraire of course could not propose such an expense to Laurence, not when he had been responsible for the loss of Laurence’s fortune; instead Temeraire had at once silenced all his mild complaints about the lack of variety: but sadly Gong Su had taken this as encouragement, and it had been nothing but kangaroo morning and night, four days running – not even a bit of tunny.

‘I do not see why we mayn’t at least go hunting further along,’ Iskierka said, even while licking out her own bowl indecorously – she quite refused to learn anything resembling polite manners. ‘This is a large country, and it stands to reason there ought to be something more worth eating if we looked. Perhaps there are some of those elephants which you have been on and on about; I should like to try one of those.’

Temeraire would have given a great deal for a delicious elephant, seasoned with a generous amount of pepper and perhaps some sage, but Iskierka was never to be encouraged in anything whatsoever. ‘You are very welcome to go flying away anywhere you like,’ he said, ‘and to surely get quite lost. No one has any notion of what this countryside is like, past the mountains, and there is no one in it, either, to ask for directions: not people or dragons.’

‘That is very silly,’ Iskierka said. ‘I do not say these kangaroos are very good eating, because they are not, and there are not enough of them, either; but they are certainly no worse than what we had in Scotland during the last campaign, so it is stuff to say there is no one living here; why wouldn’t there be? I dare say there are plenty of dragons here, only they are somewhere else, eating much better than we are.’

This struck Temeraire as not an unlikely possibility, and he made a note to discuss it privately with Laurence, later; which recalled him to Laurence’s absence, and thence to the advancing hour. ‘Roland,’ he called, with a little anxiety – of course Laurence did not need nursemaiding, but he had promised to return before the supper hour and read a little more of the novel which he had acquired in town the day before. ‘Roland, is it not past five?’

‘Lord, yes, it must be almost six,’ Emily Roland answered, putting down her sword; she and Demane were fencing a little, in the yard. She wiped her face with a tugged-free tail of her shirt, ran to the promontory edge to call down to the sailors below, and came back to say, ‘No, I am wrong: it is a quarter past seven: how strange the day is so long, when it is almost Christmas!’

‘It is not strange at all,’ Demane said. ‘It is only strange that you keep insisting it must be winter here only because it is in England.’

‘But where is Granby, if it is so late?’ Iskierka said, prickling up at once, overhearing. ‘He did not mean to go anywhere particularly nice, he assured me, or I should never have let him go looking so shabby.’

Temeraire flared his ruff a little, taking this to heart; he felt it keenly that Laurence should go about in nothing but a plain gentleman’s coat, without even a little bit of braid or golden buttons. He would gladly have improved Laurence’s appearance if he had any chance of doing so; but Laurence still had refused to sell Temeraire’s talon sheaths for him, and even if he had, Temeraire had not yet seen anything in this part of the world which would have suited him as appropriate.

‘Perhaps I had better go and look for Laurence,’ Temeraire said. ‘I am sure he cannot have meant to stay away so long.’

‘I am going to go and look for Granby, too,’ Iskierka announced.

‘Well, we cannot both go,’ Temeraire said irritably. ‘Someone must stay with the eggs.’ He cast a quick, judgmental eye over the three eggs in their protective nests of swaddling blankets, and the small canopy set over them, made of sailcloth. He was a little dissatisfied by their situation: a nice little coal brazier, he thought, would not have gone amiss even in this warm weather, and perhaps some softer cloth to go directly against the shell; and it did not suit him that the canopy was so low he could not put his head underneath it, to sniff at the eggs and see how hard their shells had become.

There had been a little difficulty over them, after disembarking: some of the officers of the Corps who had been sent along had tried to object to Temeraire’s keeping the eggs by him, as though they would be better able to protect them, which was stuff; and they had made some sort of noise about Laurence trying to kidnap the eggs, which Temeraire had snorted off.

‘Laurence does not want any other dragon, as he has me,’ Temeraire had said, ‘and as for kidnapping, I would like to know whose notion it was to take the eggs halfway across the world on the ocean, with storms and sea serpents everywhere, and to this odd place that is not even a proper country, with no dragons; it was certainly not mine.’

‘Mr. Laurence is going directly to hard labour, like all the rest of the prisoners,’ Lieutenant Forthing had said, quite stupidly, as though Temeraire were allowing any such thing to happen.

‘That is quite enough, Mr. Forthing,’ Granby had said, overhearing, and coming upon them. ‘I wonder that you would make any such ill-advised remark; I pray you take no notice of it at all, Temeraire, none at all.’

‘Oh! I do not in the least,’ Temeraire answered, ‘or any of these other complaints; it is all nonsense, when what you mean is,’ he added to Forthing and his associates, ‘you would like to keep the eggs by you, so that they should not know any better when they hatch, but think they must go at once into harness, and that they must take whichever of you wins them by chance: I heard you talk of drawing lots last night in the gunroom, so you needn’t try and deny it. I will certainly have none of it, and I expect neither will the eggs, of any of you.’

He had of course carried his point, and the eggs, away to their present relative safety and comfort, but Temeraire had no illusions as to the trustworthiness of people who could make such spitefully false remarks; he did not doubt that they would try and creep up and snatch the eggs away if he gave them even the least chance. He slept curled about the tent, therefore, and Laurence had put Roland and Demane and Sipho on watch, also.

The responsibility was proving sadly confining, however, particularly as Iskierka was not to be trusted with the eggs for any length of time. Fortunately the town was very small, and the promontory visible from nearly any point within it if one only stretched out one’s neck to look, so Temeraire felt he might risk it, only long enough to find Laurence and bring him back. Of course Temeraire was sure no one would be absurd enough to try and treat Laurence with any disrespect, but it could not be denied that men were inclined to do unaccountable things from time to time, and Forthing’s remark stirred uneasily in the back of his head.

It was true, if one wished to be very particular about such things, that Laurence was a convicted felon: convicted of treason, and his sentence only commuted to transportation at the behest of Lord Wellington, after the last campaign in England. But that sentence had been fulfilled, in Temeraire’s opinion: no one could deny that Laurence had now been transported, and the experience had been quite as much punishment as anyone could have wished.

The unhappy Allegiance had been packed to the portholes with still-more-unhappy convicts, who had been kept chained wrist and ankle all the day, and stank quite dreadfully whenever they were brought out for exercise in their clanking lines, some of them hanging limp in the restraints. It seemed quite like slavery, to Temeraire; he did not see why it should make so vast a difference as Laurence said, only because a lawcourt had said the poor convicts had stolen something: after all, anyone might take a sheep or a cow, if it were neglected by its owner and not kept under watch.

Certainly it made the ship as bad as any slaving vessel: the smell rose up through the planking of the deck, and the wind brought it forward to the dragondeck almost without surcease; even the aroma of boiling salt pork, from the galley below, could not erase it. And Temeraire had learned by accident, perhaps a month out on their journey, that Laurence was quartered directly by the gaol, where it must have been far worse.

Laurence had dismissed the notion of making any complaint, however. ‘I do very well, my dear,’ he had said, ‘as I have the whole liberty of the dragondeck for my days and the pleasanter nights, which not even the ship’s officers have. It would be unfair in the extreme, when I have not their labour, for me to be demanding some better situation: someone else would have to shift places to give me another.’

So it had been a very unpleasant transportation indeed, and now they were here, which no one could enjoy, either. Aside from the question of kangaroos, there were not very many people at all, and nothing like a proper town. Temeraire was used to seeing wretched quarters for dragons, in England, but here people did not sleep much better than the clearings in any covert, many of them in tents or makeshift little buildings which did not stay up when one flew over them, not even very low, and instead toppled over and spilled out the squalling inhabitants to make a great fuss.

And there was no fighting to be had at all, either. Several letters and newspapers had reached them along the way, when quicker frigates passed the labouring bulk of the Allegiance, and it was very disheartening to Temeraire to have Laurence read to him how Napoleon was reported to be fighting again, in Spain this time, and sacking cities all along the coast, and Lien surely with him: and meanwhile here they were on the other side of the world, uselessly. It was not in the least fair, Temeraire thought disgruntled, that Lien, who did not think Celestials ought to fight ever, should have all the war to herself while he sat here nursing eggs.

There had not even been a small engagement at sea, for consolation: they had once seen a French privateer, off at a distance, but the small vessel had set every scrap of sail and vanished away at a heeling pace. Iskierka had given chase anyway, alone – as Laurence pointed out to Temeraire he could not leave the eggs for such a fruitless adventure – and to Temeraire’s satisfaction, after a few hours she had been forced to return empty-handed.

The French would certainly not attack Sydney, either; not when there was nothing to be won but kangaroos and hovels. Temeraire did not see what they were to do here, at all; the eggs were to be seen to during their hatching, but that could not be far off, he felt sure, and then there would be nothing to do but sit about and stare out to sea.

The people were all engaged either in farming, which was not very interesting, or they were convicts, who, it seemed to Temeraire, marched out in the morning for no reason and then marched back at night. He had flown after them one day, just to see, and had discovered they were only going to a quarry to cut out bits of stone, and were then bringing the bits of stone back to town in wagon-carts, which seemed quite absurd and inefficient: he could have carried five cartloads in a single flight of perhaps only ten minutes; but when Temeraire had landed to offer his assistance, the convicts had all run away, and the soldiers had complained to Laurence stiffly afterwards.

They certainly did not like Laurence; one of them had been very rude, and said, ‘For five pence I would have you down at the quarries, too,’ at which Temeraire put his head down and said, ‘For two pence I will have you in the ocean; what have you done, I should like to know, when Laurence has won a great many battles with me, and we drove Napoleon off; and you have only been sitting here. You have not even managed to raise a respectable number of cows.’

Temeraire now felt perhaps that jibe had been a little injudicious, or perhaps he ought not to have let Laurence go into town, after all, when there were people who wished to put him into quarries. ‘I will go and look for Laurence and Granby,’ he said to Iskierka, ‘and you will stay here: if you go, you will likely set something on fire, anyway.’

‘I will not set anything on fire!’ Iskierka said. ‘Unless it needs setting on fire, to get Granby out.’

‘That is just what I mean,’ Temeraire said. ‘How, pray tell, would setting something on fire do any good at all?’

‘If no one would tell me where he was,’ Iskierka said, ‘I am quite sure that if I set something on fire and told them I would set the rest on fire too, they would come about: so there.’

‘Yes,’ Temeraire said, ‘and in the meanwhile, very likely he would be in whatever house you had set on fire, and be hurt: and if not, the fire would jump along to the nearby buildings whether you liked it to or not, and he would be in one of those. Whereas I will just take the roof off a building, and then I can look inside and lift them out, if they are in there, and people will tell me anyway.’

‘I can take a roof off a building, too!’ Iskierka said. ‘You are only jealous, because someone is more likely to want to take Granby, because he has more gold on him and is much more fine.’

Temeraire swelled with indignation and breath, and would have expelled them both in a rush, but Roland interrupted urgently, saying, ‘Oh, don’t quarrel! Look, here they are all coming back, right as rain: that is them on the road, I am sure.’

Temeraire whipped his head around: three small figures had just emerged from the small cluster of buildings which made the town, and were on the narrow cattle track which came towards the promontory.

Temeraire and Iskierka’s heads were raised high, looking down towards them; Laurence raised a hand and waved vigorously, despite the twinge in his ribs, which a bath and a little rough bandaging had not gone very far to alleviate; that injury, however, could be concealed. ‘There; at least we will not have them down here in the streets,’ Granby said, lowering his own arm, and wincing a little; he probed gingerly at his shoulder.

It was still a near-run thing when they had reached the promontory – a slow progress, and Laurence’s legs wished to quiver on occasion, before they had reached the top and could sit on the makeshift benches. Temeraire sniffed, and then lowered his head abruptly and said, ‘You are hurt; you are bleeding,’ with urgent anxiety.

‘It is nothing to concern you; I am afraid we only had a little accident in the town,’ Laurence said, guiltily preferring a certain degree of deceit to the inevitable complications of Temeraire’s indignation.

‘So, dearest, you see it is just as well I wore my old coat,’ Granby said to Iskierka, in a stroke of inspiration, ‘as it has got dirty and torn, which you would have minded if I had on something nicer.’

Iskierka was thus diverted to a contemplation of his clothing, instead of his bruises, and promptly pronounced it a natural consequence of the surroundings. ‘If you will go into a low, wretched place like that town, one cannot expect anything better,’ she said, ‘and I do not see why we are staying here, at all; I think we had better go straight back to England.’

Chapter Two

‘I am not surprised in the least,’ Bligh said, ‘in the least; you see exactly how it is now, Captain Laurence, with these whoreson dogs and Merinos.’

His language was not much better than that of the aforementioned dogs, and neither could Laurence much prefer his company. He did not like to think so of the King’s governor and a Navy officer, and particularly not one so much a notable seaman: his feat of navigating 3600 miles of open ocean in only a ship’s launch, when left adrift by the Bounty, was still a prodigy.

Laurence had looked at least to respect, if not to like; but the Allegiance had stopped to take on water in Van Diemen’s Land, and there found the governor they had confidently expected to meet in Sydney, deposed by the Rum Corps and living in a resentful exile. He had a thin, soured mouth, perhaps the consequence of his difficulties; a broad forehead exposed by his receding hair and delicate, anxious features beneath it, which did not very well correspond with the intemperate language he was given to unleash on those not uncommon occasions when he felt himself thwarted.

He had no recourse but to harangue passing Navy officers with demands to restore him to his post, but all of those prudent gentlemen, to date, had chosen to stay well out of the affair while the news took the long sea-road back to England for an official response. This, Laurence supposed, had been neglected in the upheaval of Napoleon’s invasion and its aftermath; nothing else could account for so great a delay. But no fresh orders had come, nor a replacement governor, and meanwhile in Sydney the New South Wales Corps, and those men of property who had promoted their coup, grew all the more entrenched.

The very night the Allegiance put into the harbour, Bligh had himself rowed out to consult with Captain Riley; he had very nearly asked himself to dinner, and directed the conversation with perfect disregard for Riley’s privilege; though as a Navy man himself he could not be ignorant of the custom.

‘A year now, and no answer,’ Bligh had said in a cloud of spittle and fury, waving his hand to Riley’s steward to send the bottle round to him again. ‘A full year gone, Captain, and meanwhile in Sydney these scurrilous worms yet inculcate all the populace with licentiousness and sedition: it is nothing to them, nothing, if every child born to woman on these shores should be a bastard and a bugger and a drunken leech, so long as they do a little work upon their farms, and lie quiet under the yoke: let the rum flow is their only maxim, the liquor their only coin and god.’ He did not, however, stint himself of the wine, near-vinegar though it was, nor the last dregs of Riley’s port; ate well, also, as might a man living mostly on hardtack and a little occasional game.

Laurence, silent, rolling the stem of his glass between his fingers, could not but feel some sympathy: a little less of self-restraint, and he might have railed with as much fervour, against the cowardice and stupidity which had united to send Temeraire into exile. He too wished to be restored, if not to rank or to society, at least to a place where they might be useful; and not to merely sit here on the far side of the world upon a barren rock, and complain unto heaven.

But now Bligh’s downfall might as easily be his own: his one hope of return had been a pardon from the colony’s governor, for himself and Temeraire; or at least enough of a good report to reassure those in England whose fears and narrow interest had seen them sent away.

It had always been a scant hope, a little threadbare; but Jane Roland certainly wished for the return of Britain’s one Celestial, when she had Lien to contend with on the enemy’s side. Laurence might have some hope that the nearly superstitious fear of the breed which had sprung up, after the dreadful carnage of Lien’s attack upon the Navy, at the battle of Shoeburyness, was beginning to subside, and cooler minds regret the impulse which had sent away so valuable a weapon.

At least, so she had written, encouragingly; and had advised him, ‘I may have a prayer of sending the Viceroy to fetch you home, when she has been refit; only for God’s sake be obliging to the Governor, if you please; and I will thank you not to make any more great noise of yourself: it would be just as well if there is not a word to be said of you in the next reports from the colony, good or evil, but that you have been meek as milk.’

Of that, however, there was certainly no hope, from the moment when Bligh had blotted his lips and thrown down his napkin and said, ‘I will not mince words, Captain Riley: I hope you see your duty clear under the present circumstances, and you as well, Captain Granby,’ he added.

This was, of course, to carry Bligh back to Sydney, there to threaten the colony with bombardment or pillage, at which the ringleaders MacArthur and Johnston would be handed over for judgment. ‘And to be summarily hanged like the mutinous scoundrels they are, I trust,’ Bligh said. ‘It is the only possible repair for the harm which they have done: by God,I should like to see their worm-eaten corpses on display a year and more, for the edification of their fellows; then we may have a little discipline again.’

‘Well, I shan’t,’ Granby said, incautiously blunt, ‘and,’ he added to Laurence and Riley privately, afterwards, ‘I don’t see as we have any business telling the colony they shall have him back: it seems to me after a fellow has been mutinied against three or four times, there is something to it besides bad luck.’

‘Then you shall take me aboard,’ Bligh said, scowling when Riley had also made his more polite refusal. ‘I will return with you to England, and there present the case directly; so far, I trust, you cannot deny me,’ he asserted, with some truth: such a refusal would have been most dangerous politically to Riley, whose position was less assured than Granby’s, and unprotected by any significant interest. But Bligh’s real intention, certainly, was to return not to England but to the colony, in their company and under Riley’s protection with the intention meanwhile of continuing his attempts at persuasion however long they should remain there in port.

It was not to be supposed that Laurence could put himself at Bligh’s service, in that gentleman’s present mood, without at once being ordered to restore him to his office and to turn Temeraire upon the rebels. Even if such a course should serve Laurence’s self-interest, it was wholly inimical to his every feeling. He had allowed himself and Temeraire to be so used once – by Wellington, against the French invaders during Britain’s greatest extremity; it had still left the blackest taste in his mouth, and he would never again so submit.

Yet equally, if Laurence put himself at the service of the New South Wales Corps, he became nearly an assistant to mutiny. It required no great political gifts to know this was of all accusations the one which he could least afford to sustain, and the one which would be most readily believed and seized upon by his enemies and Temeraire’s, to deny them any hope of return.

‘I do not see the difficulty; there is no reason why you should surrender to anyone,’ Temeraire said obstinately, when Laurence had in some anxiety raised the subject with him aboard ship as they made the trip from Van Diemen’s Land to Sydney: the last leg of their long voyage, which Laurence formerly would have advanced with pleasure, and now with far more pleasure would have delayed. ‘We have done perfectly well all this time at sea, and we will do perfectly well now, even if a few tiresome people have been rude.’

‘Legally, I have been in Captain Riley’s charge, and may remain so a little longer,’ Laurence answered. ‘But that cannot answer for very long: ordinarily he ought to discharge me to the authorities with the rest of the prisoners.’

‘Whyever must he? Riley is a sensible person,’ Temeraire said, ‘and if you must surrender to someone, he is certainly better than Bligh. I cannot like anyone who will insist on interrupting us at our reading, four times, only because he wishes to tell you yet again how wicked the colonists are and how much rum they drink: why that should be of any interest to anyone I am sure I do not know.’

‘My dear, Riley will not long remain with us,’ Laurence said. ‘A dragon transport cannot simply sit in harbour; this is the first time one has been spared to this part of the world, and that only to deliver us. When she has been scraped, and the mizzen topmast replaced, from that blow we had near the Cape, they will go; I am sure Riley expects fresh orders very nearly from the next ship into harbour behind us.’

‘Oh,’ Temeraire said, a little downcast, ‘and we will stay, I suppose.’

‘Yes,’ Laurence said, quietly. ‘I am sorry.’

And without transport, Temeraire would be quite truly a prisoner of their new situation: there were few ships, and none of merchant class, which could carry a dragon of Temeraire’s size, and no flying route which could safely see him to any other part of the world. A light courier, built for endurance, perhaps might manage it in extremis with a well-informed navigator, clear weather, and luck, setting down on some deserted and rocky atolls for a rest; but the Aerial Corps did not risk even them on any regular mission to the colony, and Temeraire could never follow such a course without the utmost danger.

And if any degree of persuasion on Granby’s part could manage it, he and Iskierka would go as well, when Riley did, to avoid a similar entrapment; leaving Temeraire quite isolated from his own kind, save for the three prospective hatchlings who were as yet an unknown quantity.

‘Well, that is nothing to be sorry for,’ Temeraire said, rather darkly eyeing Iskierka, who at present was asleep and exhaling quantities of steam from her spikes upon his flank, which gathered into fat droplets and rolled off to soak the deck beneath him. ‘Not,’ he added, ‘that I would object to company; it would be pleasant to see Maximus again, and Lily, and I would like to know how Perscitia is getting on with her pavilion; but I am sure they will write to me when we are settled, and as for her, she may go away any time she likes.’

Laurence felt Temeraire might find it a heavier penalty to be exacted than he yet knew. Yet the prospect of these miseries, which had heretofore on their journey greatly occupied his concerns, seemed petty in comparison with the disaster of the situation that now awaited them: trapped in the roles of convict and kingmaker both, and without any means of escape, save if they chose to sacrifice all intercourse with society and take themselves off into the wilderness.

‘Pray do not worry, Laurence,’ Temeraire said stoutly. ‘I am sure we will find it a very interesting place, and anyway,’ he added, ‘at least there will be something nicer to eat.’

Their reception, however, had if anything only given more credence to Bligh’s representations, and Laurence’s anxiety. The Allegiance could not be said to have crept up on the colony: she had entered the mouth of the harbour at eleven in the morning on a brilliantly clear day, with only the barest breath of wind to bring her along. After eight months at sea, all of them might have been pardoned for impatience, but no one could be immune to the almost shocking loveliness of the immense harbour: one bay after another curving off the main channel, and the thickly forested slopes running down to the water, interspersed with stretches of golden sand.

So Riley did not order out the boats for rowing, or even try to spread a little more sail; he let the men mostly hang along the rail, looking at the new country before them while the Allegiance stately glided among the smaller shipping like a great finwhale among clouds of baitfish. Nearly three hours of slow, clear sailing before they lowered the anchor, then, but still there was no welcome come to meet them.

‘I will fire a salute, I suppose,’ Riley said, doubtfully; and the guns roared out. Many of the colonists in their dusty streets turned to look, but still no answer came, until after another two hours at last Riley put a boat over the side, and sent Lord Purbeck, his first lieutenant, ashore.

Purbeck returned shortly to report he had spoken with Major Johnston, the present chief of the New South Wales Corps, but that gentleman refused to come aboard so long as Bligh was present: the intelligence of Bligh’s return had evidently reached Sydney in advance, likely by some smaller, quicker ship making the same passage from Van Diemen’s Land.

‘We had better go see him ourselves, then,’ Granby said, quite unconscious of the appalled looks Laurence and Riley directed at him, at the proposal that a Navy captain should lower himself to call upon an Army major, who had behaved so outrageously and ungentlemanly, and unfortunately added, ‘It don’t excuse him, but I would not have put it past that fellow Bligh to send word ahead himself that we were here to put him back in his place,’ sadly plausible; and to make matters worse, there was little alternative. Their stores were running low, and that was no small matter with the hold crammed full of convicts, and the deck weighted down with dragons.

Riley went stiffly, with a full complement of Marines, and invited Laurence and Granby both to accompany him. ‘It may not be regular, but neither is anything else about this damned mess,’ he said to Laurence, ‘and I am afraid you will need to get the measure of the fellow, more than any of us.’

It was not long in coming: ‘If you mean to try and put that cowering snake over us again, I hope you are ready to stay, and swallow his brass with us,’ Johnston said, ‘for an you go away, we’ll have him out again in a trice; for my part, I will answer to anyone who has a right to ask it for what I have done, which isn’t any of you.’

These were the first words uttered, preceding even introduction, as soon as they had been shown into his presence: not into an office, but only the antechamber in the single long building which served for barracks and headquarters both.

‘What that has to do with hailing a King’s ship properly when it comes into harbour, I would like to know,’ Granby said heatedly, responding in kind, ‘and I don’t care two pence for Bligh or you, either, until I have provision for my dragon; which you had better care about, too, unless you like her to help herself.’

This exchange had not made the welcome grow particularly warmer: even apart from the suspicion of their assisting Bligh, Johnston was evidently uneasy for all his bluster, as well might he and his fellows be with their present arrangements, at once illegal and unsettled, with so long a silence from England. Laurence might have felt some sympathy for that unease, under other circumstances: the Allegiance and her dragon passengers came into the colony as an unknown factor, and with the power of disrupting all the established order.

But the first sight of the colony had already shocked him very much: in this beautiful and lush country, to find such a general sense of malaise and disorder, women and men staggering-drunk in the streets even before the sun had set, and for most of the inhabitants thin ramshackle huts and tents the only shelters. Even these were occupied irregularly: as they walked towards their unsatisfactory meeting, and passed one such establishment with no door whatsoever, Laurence glanced and was very shocked to see within a man and a woman copulating energetically, he still half in military uniform, while another man snored sodden upon the floor and a child sat dirty and snuffling in the corner.

More distressing still was the bloody human wreckage on display at the military headquarters, where an enthusiastic flogger seemed to scarcely pause between his customers, a line of men shackled and sullen, waiting for fifty lashes or a hundred – evidently their idea of light punishment.

‘If I would not soon have a mutiny of my own,’ Riley said, half under his breath, as they returned to the Allegiance, ‘I would not let my men come ashore here for anything; Sodom and Gomorrah are nothing to it.’

Three subsequent weeks in the colony had done very little to improve Laurence’s opinion of its present or its former management. There was nothing in Bligh himself which could be found sympathetic: in language and manner he was abrupt and abrasive, and where his attempts to assert authority were balked, he turned instead to a campaign of ill-managed cajolery, equal parts insincere flattery and irritated outbursts, which did little to conceal his private conviction of his absolute righteousness.

But this was worse than any ordinary mutiny: he had been the royal governor, and the very soldiers responsible for carrying out his orders had betrayed him. Riley and Granby continuing obdurate, and likely soon to be gone, Bligh had fixed upon Laurence as his most promising avenue of appeal, and refused to be deterred; daily now he would harangue Laurence on the ill-management of the colony, the certain evils flowing from permitting such an illegitimate arrangement to continue.

‘Have Temeraire throw him overboard,’ Tharkay had suggested laconically, when Laurence had escaped to his quarters for a little relief and piquet, despite the nearly stifling heat belowdecks: the open window let in only a still-hotter breeze. ‘He can fish him out again after,’ he added, as an afterthought.

‘I very much doubt if anything so mild as ocean water would prove effective at dousing that gentleman’s ardour for any prolonged time,’ Laurence said, indulging from temper in a little sarcasm: Bligh had gone so far today as to overtly speak of his right, if restored, to grant full pardon, and Laurence had been forced to quit him mid-sentence to avoid taking insult at this species of attempted bribery. ‘It might nearly be easier,’ he added more tiredly, the moment of heat past, ‘if I did not find some justice in his accusations.’

For the evils of the colony’s arrangements were very great, even witnessed at the remove of their shipboard life. Laurence had understood that the convicts were generally given sentences of labour, which being accomplished without further instance of disorder yielded their emancipation and the right to a grant of land: a thoughtful design envisioned by the first governor, intended to render them and the country both settled. But over the course of the subsequent two decades, this had remained little more than a design, and in practice nearly all the men of property were the officers of the New South Wales Corps or their former fellows.

The convicts at best they used as cheap labour; at worst, as chattels. Without prospects or connections to make them either interested in their future or ashamed of their behaviour, and trapped in a country that was a prison which needed no walls, the convicts were easily bribed to both labour and their own pacification with cheap rum, brought in at a handsome profit by the soldiers, and in such a way those who ought to have enforced order instead contributed to its decay, with no care for the disorder and self-destruction they thus engendered.

‘Or at least, so Bligh has argued, incessantly, and everything which I have seen bears him out,’ Laurence said. ‘But Tenzing, I cannot trust myself; I fear that I wish the complaints to be just, rather than know they are so. I am sorry to say it would be convenient to have an excuse to restore him.’

‘There is capot, I am afraid,’ Tharkay said, putting down his last card. ‘If you insist on achieving justice and not only convenience, you would learn more from speaking with some local citizen, a settled man, with nothing to complain of in his treatment on either side.’

‘If such a man is to be found, I can see no reason he would willingly confide his opinion, in so delicate a matter,’ Laurence said, throwing in, and gathering the cards up to sort out afresh.

‘I have letters of introduction to some few of the local factors,’ Tharkay said, a piece of news to Laurence, who wondered; so far as he knew, Tharkay had only come to New South Wales to indulge an inveterate wanderlust; but of course he could not intrude upon Tharkay’s privacy with a direct question.

‘If you like,’ Tharkay had continued, ‘I can make inquiries; and as for reason, if there is discontent enough to form the grounds for your decision, I would imagine that same discontent sufficient motive to speak.’

The attempt to pursue this excellent advice now having ended in public ignominy, however, Bligh was only too eager to take advantage and press Laurence further for action. ‘Dogs, Captain Laurence, dogs and cowardly sheep, all of them,’ Bligh said, ignoring yet again Laurence’s attempt to correct his address to Mr. Laurence; it would suit Bligh better, Laurence in exasperation supposed, to be restored by a military officer, and not a private citizen.

Bligh continued, ‘I imagine you can hardly disagree with me now. It is impossible you should disagree with me. It is the direct consequence of their outrageous usurpation of the King’s authority. What respect, what discipline, can possibly be maintained under a leadership so wholly devoid of just and legal foundation, so utterly lost to loyalty and—’

Here Bligh paused, perhaps reconsidering an appeal to the virtues of obedience, in the light of Laurence’s reputation; throwing his tiller over, however, Bligh without losing much time said instead, ‘and to decency; allow me to assure you this infamous kind of behaviour is general throughout the military ranks of the colony, indulged and indeed encouraged by their leaders.’

Fatigue and soreness at once physical and of the spirit had by now cut Laurence’s temper short: his ribs had grown swollen and very tender beneath the makeshift bandage; his hands ached a great deal, and what was worse, to no purpose: nothing gained but a sense of disgust. He was very willing to think ill of the colony’s leadership, of Johnston and MacArthur, but Bligh had not recommended himself, and his nearly gleeful satisfaction was too crassly, too visibly opportunistic.

‘I must wonder, sir,’ Laurence said, ‘how you would expect to govern, when you should be forced to rely upon those same soldiers whom you presently so disdain; having removed their ringleaders, who have preferred them to an extreme and given them so much license, how would you conciliate their loyalty, having been restored at the hands of one whom they already see as an outlaw?’

‘Oh! You give too much credit to their loyalty,’ Bligh said, dismissively, ‘and too little to their sense; they must know, of course, that MacArthur and Johnston are doomed. The length of the sea-voyage, the troubles in England, these alone have preserved them; but the hangman’s noose waits for them both, and as the time draws near, the advantages of their preferment lose their lustre. Some reassurances, some concessions: of course they may keep their land grants, and those appointments not made too ill may remain …’

He made a few more general remarks of this sort, with no better course of action envisioned on Bligh’s part, so far as Laurence could see, than to levy a series of new but only cosmetic restrictions, which should certainly only inflame men irritated by the overthrow, by an outsider and an enemy, of their tolerated if not necessarily chosen leadership.

‘Then I hardly see,’ Laurence said, not very politely, ‘precisely how you would repair these evils you condemn, which I cannot see were amended during your first administration; nor is Temeraire, as you seem to imagine, some sort of magical cannon which may be turned on anyone you like.’

‘If with this collection of mealy-mouthed objections you will excuse yourself from obliging me, Mr. Laurence,’ Bligh answered, deep colour spotting in the hollows of his cheeks, ‘I must count it another disappointment, and mark it against your character, such as that is,’ this with an acrid and unpleasant edge; and he left the dragondeck with his lips pressed tight and angry.

If Bligh followed in his usual mode, however, he would soon repent of his hasty words and seek another interview; Laurence knew it very well, and his feelings were sufficiently lacerated already that he did not care to be forced to endure the pretence of an apology, undoubtedly to be followed by a fresh renewal of those same arguments he had already heard and rejected.

He had meant to sleep aboard the ship, whose atmosphere had been greatly improved: the convicts having been delivered to the dubious embrace of the colony, Riley had set every one of his men to pumping the lower decks clean, sluicing out the filth and miasma left by several hundred men and women who had been afforded only the barest minimum of exercise and liberty essential to health. Smudges of smoke had been arranged throughout, and then a fresh round of pumping undertaken.

With the physical contamination thus erased, and the hovering and perpetual aura of misery, Laurence’s small quarters now made a comfortable if not luxurious residence by his standards, formed in his youth by the dimensions of a midshipman’s cot. Meanwhile the small shelter on the dragons’ promontory remained unroofed and as yet lacked its final wall, but Laurence felt bruised more in spirit than in body, and the weather held dry; he went below only to collect a few articles, and quitted the ship to seek refuge in Temeraire’s company.

In this mood, he was by no means prepared to be accosted on the track back up to the promontory, by a gentleman on horseback, of aquiline face, by the standards of the colony elegantly dressed and escorted by a groom, who leaned from his horse and demanded, ‘Am I speaking with Mr. Laurence?’

‘You have the advantage of me,’ Laurence said, a little rudely in his own turn; but he was not inclined to regret his curtness when the man said, ‘I am John MacArthur; I should like a word.’

There was little question he was the architect of the entire rebellion; and though he had arranged to be appointed Colonial Secretary, he had so far not even given Riley the courtesy of a call. ‘You choose odd circumstances for your request, sir,’ Laurence said, ‘and I do not propose to stand speaking in the dust of the street. You are welcome to accompany me to the covert, if you like; although I would advise you to leave your horse.’

He was a little surprised to find MacArthur willing to hand his reins to the groom, and dismount to walk with him. ‘I hear you had a little difficulty in the town today,’ MacArthur said. ‘I am very sorry it should have happened.

‘You must know, Mr. Laurence, we have had a light hand on the rein here; a light hand, and it has answered beautifully, beyond all reasonable hopes. Our colony does not show to advantage, you may perhaps think, coming from London; but I wonder what you would think if you had been here in our first few years. I came in the year 90; will you credit it, that there were not a thousand acres under cultivation, and no supply? We nearly starved, one and all, three times.’

He stopped and held out a hand, which trembled a little. ‘They have been so, since that first winter,’ he said, and resumed walking.

‘Your perseverance is to be admired,’ Laurence said, ‘and that of your fellows.’

‘If nothing else, that for certain sure,’ MacArthur said. ‘But it has not been by chance, or any easy road, that we have found success; only through the foresight of wise leadership and the strength of determined men. This is a country for a determined man, Mr. Laurence. I came here a lieutenant, with not a lick of property to my name; now I have 10,000 acres. I do not brag,’ he added. ‘Any man can do here what I have done. This is a fine country.’

There was an emphasis on any man, which Laurence found distasteful in the extreme; he read the slinking bribery in MacArthur’s pretty speech as easily as he had in Bligh’s whispers of pardon, and he pressed his lips together and stretched his pace.

MacArthur perceived his mistake, perhaps; he increased his own to match and said, to shift the subject, ‘But what does the Government send us? You have been a Navy officer yourself, Mr. Laurence; you have had the dregs of the prison-hulks, pressed into service; you know what I am speaking of. Such men are not formed for respectability. They can only be used, and managed, and to do it requires rum and the lash – it is the very understanding of the service. I am afraid it has made us all a little coarse here, however; we are ill-served by the proportion of our numbers. I wonder how you would have liked a crew of a hundred, five and ninety of them gaolbirds, and not five able seamen to your name.’

‘Sir, you are correct in this much; I have had a little difficulty, earlier in the day,’ Laurence said, pausing in the road; his ribs ached sharply in his side, ‘so I will be frank; you might have had conversation of myself, or of Captain Riley or Captain Granby, as it pleased you, these last two weeks, for the courtesy of a request. May I ask you to be a little more brief?’

‘Your reproach is a just one,’ MacArthur said, ‘and I will not tire you further tonight; if you will do me the kindness of returning my visit in the morning at the barracks?’

‘Forgive me,’ Laurence said dryly, ‘but I find I am not presently inclined to pay calls in this society; as yet I find the courtesies beyond my grasp.’

‘Then perhaps I may pay you another call,’ MacArthur suggested, if with slightly pressed lips, and to this Laurence could only incline his head.

‘I cannot look forward to the visit with any pleasure,’ Laurence said, ‘but if he comes, we ought to receive him.’

‘So long as he is not insulting, and does not try to put you in a quarry, he may come, if he likes,’ Temeraire said, making a concession, while privately determining he would keep a very close eye upon this MacArthur person; for his own part, he saw no reason to offer any courtesy at all to someone who was master of a place so wretchedly organized, and acquainted with so many ill-mannered people. Governor Bligh was not a very pleasant person, perhaps, but at least he did not seem to think it in the ordinary course of things for gentlemen to be knocked down in the street in mysterious accidents.

MacArthur did come, shortly after they had breakfasted. He drew up rather abruptly, reaching the top of the hill; Laurence had not yet seen him, but Temeraire had been looking over at the town – sixteen sheep were being driven into a pen – very handsome sheep – and he saw MacArthur pause, and halt, and look as though he might go away again.

Temeraire might have let him do so, and had a quiet morning of reading, but he had not enjoyed his meal and in a peevish humour said, ‘In my opinion it is quite rude to come into someone’s residence only to stare at them, and turn pale, and go, as if there were something peculiar in them, and not in such absurd behaviour. I do not know why you bothered to climb the hill at all, if you are such a great coward; it is not as though you did not know that I was here.’

‘Why, in my opinion, you are a great rascal,’ MacArthur said, purpling up his neck. ‘What do you mean by calling me a coward, because I need to catch my breath.’

‘Stuff,’ Temeraire said, roundly, ‘you were frightened.’

‘I do not say that a man hasn’t a right to be taken aback a moment, when he sees a beast the size of a frigate waiting to eat him,’ MacArthur said, ‘but I am damned if I will swallow this; you do not see me running away, do you?’

‘I would not eat a person,’ Temeraire said, revolted, ‘and you needn’t be disgusting, even if you do have no manners,’ to which Laurence coming around said, ‘So spake the pot,’ rather dryly.

He added, ‘Will you come and sit down, Mr. MacArthur? I regret I cannot offer you anything better than coffee or chocolate, and I must advise against the coffee,’ and Temeraire rather regretfully saw he had missed the opportunity to be rid of this unpleasant visitor.

MacArthur kept turning his head, to look at Temeraire, and remarked, ‘They don’t look so big, from below,’ as he stirred his chocolate so many times it must have grown quite cold. Temeraire was quite fond of chocolate, but he could not have that, either; not properly, without enough milk, and the expense so dear; it was not worth only having the tiniest taste, which only made one want more. He sighed.

‘Quite prodigious,’ MacArthur repeated, looking at Temeraire again. ‘He must take a great deal of feeding.’

‘We are managing,’ Laurence said politely. ‘The game is conveniently plentiful, and they do not seem to be used to being hunted from aloft.’

Temeraire considered that at least if MacArthur was here, he might be of some use. ‘Is there anything else to hunt, nearby?’ he inquired. ‘Not of course,’ he added untruthfully, ‘that anyone could complain of kangaroo.’

‘I am surprised if you have found any of those in twenty miles as the crow goes,’ MacArthur said. ‘We pretty near et up the lot, in the first few years.’

‘Well, we have been getting them around the Nepean River, and in the mountains,’ Temeraire said, and MacArthur’s head jerked up from his cup so abruptly that the spoon he had left inside it tipped over and spattered his white breeches with chocolate.

He did not seem to notice that he had made a sad mull of his clothing, but said thoughtfully, ‘The Blue Mountains? Why, I suppose you can fly all over them, can’t you?’

‘We have flown all over them,’ Temeraire said, rather despondently, ‘and there is nothing but kangaroo, and those rabbits that have no ears, which are too small to be worth eating.’

‘I would have been glad of a wombat or a dozen often enough, myself,’ MacArthur said, ‘but it is true we do not have proper game in this country, I am sorry to say I know from experience: too lean by half; you cannot keep up to fighting weight on it, and there is not enough grazing yet for cattle. We have not found a way through the mountains, you know,’ he added. ‘We are quite hemmed in.’

‘It is a pity no one has tried keeping elephants,’ Temeraire said.

‘Ha ha, keeping elephants, very good,’ MacArthur said, as if this were some sort of a joke. ‘Do elephants make good eating?’

‘Excellently good,’ Temeraire said. ‘I have not had an elephant since we were in Africa: I do not think I have tasted anything quite so good as a properly cooked elephant; outside of China, that is,’ he added loyally, ‘where I do not think they can raise them. But it seems as though this would be perfectly good country for them: it is certainly as hot as ever it was in Africa, where they raised them. Anyway we will need more food for the hatchlings, soon.’

‘Well, I have brought sheep, but I did not much think of bringing over elephants,’ MacArthur said, looking at the three eggs with an altered expression. ‘How much would a dragon eat, do you suppose, in the way of cattle?’

‘Maximus will eat two cows when he can get them, in a day,’ Temeraire said, ‘but I do not think that is very healthy; I would not eat more than one, unless of course I have been fighting, or flying far; or if I were very particularly hungry.’

‘Two cows a day, and soon to be five of you?’ MacArthur said. ‘The Lord safe preserve us.’

‘If this has brought you to a better understanding of the necessity of addressing the situation, sir,’ Laurence said, rather pointedly Temeraire thought, ‘I must be grateful for your visit; we have had very little cooperation heretofore in making our arrangements from Major Johnston.’

MacArthur put down his chocolate cup. ‘I was speaking last night, I think,’ he said, ‘of what a man can make of himself, in this country; it is a subject dear to my heart, and I hope I did not ramble on it too long. It is a hard thing, you will understand, Mr. Laurence, to see a country like this: begging for hands, for the ploughshare and the till, and no one to work it but an army of the worst slackabouts born of woman lying about, complaining if they are given less than their day’s half-gallon of rum, and they would take it at ten in the morning, if they could get it.

‘In the Corps, we may not be very pretty, but we know how to work; I believe the Aerial Corps, too, might be given such a character by some,’ MacArthur went on. ‘And we know how to make men work. Whatever has been built in this country, we ha’e built it, and to have a – perhaps I had better hold my tongue; I think you have been shipmates with Governor Bligh?’

‘I would not say we were shipmates,’ Temeraire put in; he did not care to be saddled with such a relationship. ‘He came aboard our ship, but no-one much wanted him; only one must be polite.’

Laurence looked a bit rueful, and MacArthur, smiling, said, ‘Well, I won’t say anything against the gentleman, only perhaps he was no’ too fond of our ways. The which,’ he added, ‘certainly can be improved upon, Mr. Laurence, I do not deny it; but no man likes to be corrected by come-lately.’

‘When come-lately is sent by the King,’ Laurence said, ‘one may dislike, and yet endure.’

‘Very good sense; but good sense has limits, sir, limits,’ MacArthur said, ‘where it comes up hard against honour: some things a man of courage cannot bear, and damn the consequences.’

Laurence did not say anything; Laurence was quite silent. After a moment, MacArthur added, ‘I do not mean to make you excuses: I have sent my eldest on to England, though I could spare him ill, and he must make my case to their Lordships. But I will tell you, I do not tremble, sir, for fear of the answer; I sleep the night through.’

Temeraire became conscious gradually, while he spoke, of being poked; Emily was at his side, tugging energetically on his wing-tip. ‘Temeraire!’ she hissed up to him, ‘I oughtn’t go right up with that fellow there, he is sure to see I am a girl; but we must tell the captain, there is a ship come from England—’

‘I see her!’ Temeraire answered, looking over into the harbour: a trim, handsome little frigate of perhaps twenty-four guns: she was drawn up not far from the Allegiance, riding easily at anchor. ‘Laurence,’ he said, leaning over, ‘there is a ship come from England, Roland says: it is the Beatrice, I think.’

MacArthur stopped speaking, abruptly. Emily tugged again. ‘That is not the news,’ she said, impatient. ‘Captain Rankin is on it.’

‘Oh! whyever should he have come?’ Temeraire said, his ruff pricking up. ‘Is he a convict?’ Without waiting for an answer, he turned his head to the other side. ‘And Roland says that Rankin is here, on the ship: that dreadful fellow from Loch Laggan. You may certainly put him in a quarry,’ he added to MacArthur. ‘I cannot think of anyone who deserves it more, the way he treated poor Levitas.’

‘Oh, why won’t you listen,’ Roland cried. ‘He ain’t a convict at all; he has come for one of the eggs.’

Chapter Three

‘Owing to the mode of our last communication, it is quite impossible Mr. Laurence and I should have any intercourse. I hope I may not be thought difficult,’ Rankin said, his crisp and aristocratic vowels carrying quite clearly, over the deck of the Allegiance; his transport the Beatrice had already gone away again, with no more news for the colony: she had left only two months after the Allegiance herself, and the news of the rebellion had not yet reached the Government. ‘But it is generally accepted, I believe, that the dragondeck is reserved for officers of the Corps; and if the gentleman is quartered towards the stern, I see no reason why any inconvenient scenes should arise.’

‘I see no reason why I shouldn’t push his nose in for him,’ Granby said, under his breath, joining Laurence on the leeward side of the quarterdeck, where passengers were ordinarily allowed liberty. ‘The worst of it,’ he added, ‘is I can’t see any way clear to refusing him: the orders are plain black on white, he is to be put to Wringe’s egg. What a damned waste.’

Laurence nodded a little; he, too, had had a letter, if not in an official capacity. ‘… though would I like nothing better than for him to sink on his way to you,’ Jane had written. ’… but his damned Family have been squalling at their Lordships for nigh on Five Years now, and he had the infernal Bad Luck — mine, that is — of finding himself in Scotland, lately, when we were so overset: went up with one of the Ferals out of Arkady’s pack, saw a little fighting, and managed to get himself wounded again.

‘So I must give him a Beast, or at least a Chance of one, and Someone must put up with him thereafter; as I am about to have twenty-six hatchlings to feed and likely enough a War in Spain, I don’t scruple to say, Better You Than Me.’

This last was emphatically full of capitals, and underlined.

‘I have made the Excuse, that this is the first Egg we have had out of the Ferals, and his having Experience of them in the field, should be an Advantage in its Training.

‘I was tolerably transparent, I think, but a Title does wonderful things, Laurence: I should have contrived one much sooner if I had known it’s Use. Gentlemen who swore at me like fishwives sixmonth ago are become sweet as milk, all because the Regent has signed some scrap of paper for me, and nod their Heads and say Yes, Very Good, when before they would have argued to Doomsday if I should say, It is coming on to rain. Also it is a great benefit they none of them know whether to say Milady or Sir, and as soon as they have arrived at a Decision, they change it again. I only hope they may not make me a Duchess to make themselves easy by saying Your Grace; it would not suit half so well.

‘I am very obliged to your Mother, by the bye: she wrote, when she saw my name had come out in Debrett’s — as J. Roland, very discreet — and had me to a nice, sociable little Dinner, with every Cabinet Minister she could contrive to lay hands on: all very shocked, as they had brought their Wives, but they could not say so much as Boo with Her Ladyship at the foot of the Table as if Butter would not Melt in her mouth, and the Ladies did not mind inn the Least, when they understood I was an Officer, and not some Vauxhall Comedienne. I found them sensible Creatures all of them, and I think perhaps I have got quite the wrong Notion about them, as a Class; I expect I ought to be cultivating them. I don’t mind Society half so much if I may wear Trousers, and they were very kind, and left me their Cards.

‘We are trundling along well enough otherwise and getting back into some Order: feeding dragons on Mash and Mutton Stew is a damn’d site cheaper, Thank God, if the older ones do complain; Excidium is all Sighs and loud Reminiscences of fresh Cattle, and Temeraire’s name is not much lov’d among them, for having given us the Technique.

‘I will say a word in your Ear for him: I am uneasy about this Business in Spain. Bonaparte is no’ a Fool, and why he should wreck a dozen cities, on the southern Coast, fresh from the ruin of his Invasion, I cannot understand. Mulgrave thinks he means to take Spain and to stop us from supplying them from the Sea, but for that, he ought to be burning them in Portugal, instead.

‘If Temeraire should think it some Contrivance of Lien, some Chinese Stratagem, I would be glad to know of it, even late as the Intelligence must come: it is very strange to think, Laurence, that I cannot hope for an Answer in less than ten Months and a year and a half the more likely. Now we have lost the Cape Town port to those African fellows, the couriers cannot even go to India, and meet your letter halfway.

‘For Consolation, if you should find yourself overcome with Passion and happen to accidentally drop Rankin down a Cliff, or by some Mischance run him through, at least I will not hear of it for as long, and anyway you are already transported, which I must call a great Convenience for Murder. But I do not mean to Hint, although it is a great Pity to waste an Egg upon him, even one of our poor unwanted Stepchildren.’

The three eggs which had been sent with them to begin the experiment were not, by the lights of Britain’s breeders, any great prizes: one a dirt-common Yellow Reaper, sent over because there were seventeen such eggs in the breeding grounds waiting; the second a disappointing and extremely stunted little thing which had unaccountably been produced out of a Parnassian and a Chequered Nettle, both heavyweights. The last and most promising of the three, large and handsomely mottled and striated, was the offspring of Arkady, the feral leader, and Wringe, the best fighter of his pack.

There was no great enthusiasm for this egg in Britain, where the breeders for the most part viewed the newly recruited ferals as demons sent to wreak havoc and destruction upon their carefully designed lines; so it had been sent away. But it had quickly become the settled thing among the aviators who had been sent along as candidates for the new hatchlings to anticipate great things of the egg. ‘It stands to reason,’ Laurence had overheard more than one officer say to another, ‘if that Wringe one should have got so big out in the wild, this one should do a good deal better with proper feeding, and training; and no one could complain of the ferals’ fighting spirit.’

Those young officers were now in something of a quandary, which Laurence was not above grimly enjoying, a little: they had been firm and united in their disdain, both for his personal treason and for what they saw as his failure to manage Temeraire properly. But now Rankin had come to supplant one of them, and claim the best egg for himself; he was at once their most bitter enemy, and Temeraire’s recalcitrance their best hope of denying him.

‘He mayn’t have it at all,’ Temeraire had said at once, when he had been informed of the proposed arrangement, ‘and if he likes, he can come up here and try and take it; I should be very pleased to discuss it with him,’ darkly, in a way which bade fair to answer all of Jane’s hopes.

‘My dear,’ Laurence said, having lowered his letter, ‘I like the prospect as little as you; but if he should be denied even the chance, and return to England thwarted, we have only deferred the evil: he will certainly be put to another egg, there, where you may be certain the poor hatchling will have less opportunity to refuse. And the blame will certainly devolve upon Granby: the orders are for him, and the responsibility to carry them out.’

‘I am certainly not having Granby take the blame for anything,’ Iskierka said, raising her head, ‘and I do not see what the problem is, anyway; the egg will be hatched, by then, and why should it be any business of ours what it does after that? It can take him or not, as it pleases.’

Iskierka herself had hatched already breathing fire, and with all the disobliging and determined character anyone could have imagined; she would certainly have had no difficulty in rejecting any unworthy candidate. Most hatchlings did not come from the shell with quite the same mettle, however, and the Aerial Corps had developed many a technique and lure to ensure the successful harnessing of the beasts. Rankin had certainly prepared himself well: he had come over from the Beatrice with not only his two chests of personal baggage, but a pile of leather harness, some chain-mail netting, and a sort of heavy leather hood.

‘You throw it over the hatchling’s head as it comes out of the shell, if you are out-of-doors,’ Granby said, when Laurence now inquired, ‘and then it cannot fly away; when you take it off, the light dazzles their eyes, and then if you lay some meat in front of them, they are pretty sure to let you put the harness on, if you will only let them eat. And some fellows like it, because they say it makes them easier to handle; if you ask me,’ he added, bitterly, ‘all it makes them is shy: they are never certain of their ground, after.’

‘I wonder if you might be able to put me in the way of some cattle merchant,’ Rankin was saying, to Riley and Lord Purbeck. ‘I intend to provide for the hatchling’s first meal from my personal funds.’

‘Surely he can be restrained in some way,’ Laurence said, low. He was not yet beyond the heat of righteous anger kindled all those years before, when they had been unwilling witness to the cruelty of Rankin’s treatment of his first dragon. Rankin was the sort of aviator beloved of the Navy Board: in his estimation as in theirs, dragons were merely a resource and a dangerous one, to be managed and restrained and used to their limits; it was the same philosophy which had rendered it not only tolerable but desirable to contemplate destroying ten thousand of them through the underhanded sneaking method of infection.

Where Rankin might have been kind to Levitas, he had been indifferent; where indifferent, deliberately cruel, all in the name of keeping his poor beast so downtrodden as to have no spirit to object to any demands made upon it. When Levitas had with desperate courage brought them back the warning of Napoleon’s first attempt to cross the Channel, in the year five, and been mortally wounded in that effort, Rankin had left his dragon alone and slowly dying in a small and miserable clearing, while he sought comfort for his own lesser injuries.

It was a mode of service which had gone thoroughly out of fashion in the last century among most aviators, who increasingly preferred to better preserve the spirit of their partners; the Government did not always agree, however, and Rankin was of an ancient dragon-keeping family, who had preserved their own habits and methods and passed these along to the scions sent into the Corps, at an age sufficiently delayed for these to be impressed upon them firmly, along with a conviction of their own superiority to the general run of aviators.

‘He cannot be permitted to ruin the creature,’ Laurence said. ‘We might at least bar him from use of the hood—’

‘Interfere with a hatching?’ Granby cried, looking at Laurence sidelong and dismayed. ‘No: he has a right to make the best go of it he can, however he likes. Though if he can’t manage it in fifteen minutes, someone else can have a try,’ he added, an attempt at consolation, ‘and you may be sure fifteen minutes is all the time he will have; that is all I can do.’

‘That is not all that I can do,’ Temeraire said, mantling, ‘and I am not going to sit about letting him throw nets and chains and hoods on the hatchling: I do not care if it is not in the shell anymore. In my opinion, it is still quite near being an egg.’

He realized this was an irregular way of looking at the matter, but after all, if the hatchling had not yet eaten anything, and if perhaps a bit of egg were still stuck to its hide, one could not be sure that it was ready to manage on its own, and so it was still one’s responsibility. ‘Anyway,’ he added, ‘I do not like him at all, and I don’t see that he has any right to be a captain again; just let him try and come here, and I will knock him down for it.’

‘You are not doing anything which Granby would not like!’ Iskierka said, jetting out a bit of steam.

‘As though you had anything to say to it,’ Temeraire said, coolly. ‘Anyway, you do things which Granby does not like every day.’

‘Only,’ Iskierka said, ‘when it is particularly important,’ a monstrous lie, ‘and anyway, that is quite different. You might think of Granby, since you are always on about how I do not take proper care of him: I am not having him made not a captain, like you have done with Laurence, only because you are being absurd again and worrying about hatched dragons,’ she added, which thrust hit home quite successfully; Temeraire flinched involuntarily, and put back his ruff.

‘Why,’ Iskierka continued, ‘I have seen this Rankin person: he is smaller than a pony, even. I could have burnt him up to a cinder as soon as I cracked the shell.’

‘If he wanted you,’ Temeraire said, ‘he might have you, and welcome,’ but this was only a feeble bit of quarrelling, and not really a just argument; he put his head down and stared at the eggs unhappily.

‘And,’ he said to Laurence, a little later, ‘if the egg does not take him, I suppose he will want to try the second, and then the third; I am sure he will not just go, when he has come all this way where no-one wants him, only to be difficult.’

‘Only to have another dragon; but so far as that goes, I am afraid you may be right,’ Laurence said, low. ‘But there is not much we can do about it, my dear, if we do not care to put Granby in a very awkward position; and make our own the worse. The eggs are not formally in our care at all, but his.’

‘But Arkady charged me with his,’ Temeraire said, ‘and I gave my word; surely that makes me interested.’

Laurence paused and agreed sombrely, ‘That does put another complexion on the matter,’ but it did not offer any other solution, except squashing Rankin, which would have been quite unfair, as a matter of relative size, and which Laurence insisted was not to be contemplated, despite Admiral Roland’s letter.

Laurence did not dissuade Temeraire with much enthusiasm; he would not have greatly minded Rankin’s being squashed under other circumstances, and the present situation would have rendered the event not only painless but highly desirable. His sentiments in the matter were only the more exacerbated the following morning, when Riley called upon them: Laurence had preferred to pass another irregular night up on the promontory in his small tent, still more comfortable a berth than remaining aboard ship, when he now must be careful only to visit the quarterdeck, and not go forward.

For Rankin was of course perfectly correct in the point of etiquette, and they were both barred from the field of honour, which was the only other suitable redress Rankin could have demanded for Laurence’s actions, in their last meeting. Laurence could not be sorry in the least for having handled Rankin so violently, but neither could he force himself into Rankin’s presence, nor pursue the quarrel to which Rankin could not make answer, and retain any pretensions to the character of a gentleman.

‘And I cannot blame you for it, either,’ Riley said, ‘but it left me in an awkward position. I had to have him to dinner, and Bligh, too, or look rather shabby; and I am wretchedly sorry, Laurence: is this egg likely to be something out of the common way? Because what must the cawker do but ten minutes after we are at table declare Bligh has been monstrous used by a pack of mutinous dogs, and it ought not be borne.’

‘Oh, damn him,’ Laurence said, unguarded in savage exasperation. ‘No, Tom, so far as the egg goes; not if you mean of an order to pick a quarrel with Temeraire; but that has nothing to do with the case. We cannot set upon a British dragon, if it is as small as a Winchester. Are we to have a pitched battle in the harbour? I cannot conceive what he is thinking.’

‘Oh, I will tell you that,’ Riley said. ‘He is thinking he means to have the beast, will-you, nill-you. I beg you to imagine how our passenger took it: Bligh at once informed me he considers it my duty to ensure the Admiralty’s orders as regards the egg are carried out; and that he will be sure to write their Lordships to express his opinion, and convey that he has made me so aware.’

And the very last thing desirable to Riley at the present date was any suggestion of disobedience or recalcitrance, and all the more so if there were any sign it should be provoked by Laurence or even amenable to him. Their connection had already injured Riley’s credit with their Lordships to a severe extent, and he served now, as did all Laurence’s former associates, under a veil of suspicion. Bligh might not carry his point so far as his re-establishment in the colony, and his ill-management might invite the scorn rather than the sympathy of the Admiralty; that did not mean the Navy Board would not accept with the other hand any charges Bligh laid at Riley’s door.

All the more so, Laurence knew, that they had been given fresh cause to regard Temeraire, and any personage even remotely associated with him, with suspicion: Temeraire had received a letter also, in the post carried by the Beatrice; from Perscitia, who had evidently somehow acquired a scribe.

‘We have finished the Pavilion already—’

‘Oh!’ Temeraire said sadly, ‘and I am not there to see it.’

‘—and begun on a second; we were puzzled where we should get the funds, as it is amazing how quickly Money goes. The Government tried to persuade us all to go back to the Breeding Grounds and leave off building: when we were almost quite finished, if you can imagine it. So the promised Supply has been very late and slow, and when they do send us any Cattle they are thin and not tasty, so we have had to buy Food of our own, and it is very dear at present; also Requiescat will eat like A Glutton, of course.

‘But we contrived: Majestatis suggested we should send Lloyd to Dover, to inquire after carting work, and we have worked out that men will pay a great deal just for us to carry things to London, and other Towns, as we can do it much more quickly than Horses; and I have worked out a very nice Method by which one can calculate the most efficient Way to go among all of them, taking on some goods and leaving off others; only it grows quite tiresome to calculate if one wishes to go to more than five or six Places.

‘There was a little noise about our coming and going — nobody much minded when it was just the Winchesters, or even the Reapers; but of course, Requiescat can carry so very much more — even if he is too lazy to go further than Dover to London and back — and Ballista and Majestatis and the other Heavyweights, and after all, it is not as though we do not fit into the Coverts, so we really saw no reason they should not go, too. But then the Government grew upset, when they might have given us proper Food to begin with, and we should never have needed to trouble ourselves! And they tried to make a Quarrel, and set some harnessed dragons in the Covert and told them to keep us out of it.

‘They were out of Scotland, I think; we did not know them, particularly, but Ballista said to them it was no sense squabbling over something so silly: for look, the Government had just put them in the Covert, because they did not want us in the Covert, even though they were just as big; and anyway there was plenty of Room, and we were only passing through. They all thought that was quite sensible, once she gave them a few of our Cows to be friendly; it seems Cows are very dear in the coverts, too, and nobody gets them very often anymore, even the harnessed beasts.’

There was besides this communiqué a good deal of gossip about the relations among the dragons, which Laurence read to Temeraire only half-attending; between Perscitia’s lines he could easily read the frantic reports racing through Whitehall: unharnessed heavyweights descending as they wished into every great city of Britain, terrifying the populace and wrecking the business of ordinary carters to boot; and bribing their harnessed fellows with the greatest of ease, despite all the certain persuasions and efforts of those dragons’ captains.

‘That is a great pity about Gladius and Cantarella having a falling-out,’ Temeraire said, ‘for I was sure they would have made a splendid egg; also I do not like Queritoris very much, for he was always making a fuss about carrying soldiers, when we all had to do it; so very tiresome, for everyone, but complaining did not make it any better. Laurence, do you suppose we might carry things for people, here, and so be paid? Only, no,’ he interrupted his own thought, rather downcast, ‘for there is only this one town, and no other to carry things to; how I wish we were home!’

Laurence had wished it too, but silently folded away the letter which killed his hopes of return aborning; it yet crackled in his coat pocket now, as he answered Riley, ‘I am sorry you should have had the unpleasantness of his threats; we will of course not ask you to interfere, Tom; nor, I hope, put you in any awkward position.’

‘Well, I hope I am not so much a scrub as to come here and ask you out of the side of my mouth to have a care, for my own sake,’ Riley said. ‘I am pretty well found in prize money, after all, and if I am set ashore, at least I can take my little fellow home, and not worry my life away wondering what absurd thing Catherine is doing with him.’ This, a little bitterly: he had not received a letter.

‘But this could easily grow to be a more serious matter than a mere quarrel,’ Laurence said soberly to Temeraire, after Riley had left, ‘if Bligh chooses to make it a charge of disobedience, and their Lordships pleased to have an excuse for a court-martial; I can easily imagine it.’

‘I can, too,’ Temeraire said, ‘and I am sure we oughtn’t let him hurt Riley, or Granby either; but we cannot let Rankin hurt the egg, either. Laurence, I have made Roland and Demane bring the egg out, just long enough so I might look at it, and I think it is going to hatch very soon; can we not take it away?’

‘Away?’ Laurence said; there was nowhere to go.

‘Oh, into the countryside,’ Temeraire said, ‘only until it has hatched, I mean; and then we can come back again, and it may choose among the officers if it likes. Or if you thought better,’ he added, ‘we might take one or two of the best of them, instead, so it might choose among them directly: but no one who would mean to try and use a hood, or a net.’

It was a scheme which Laurence ought at once have rejected, but he surprised himself by thinking soberly that so blatant a manoeuvre would, at least, be a stroke bold enough to ensure blame could be set only to their own much-overdrawn account. Granby and Riley, left behind and unable to trace their whereabouts, could not so easily be complained-of as Granby and Riley standing idly by, in the face of some interference carried out immediately before them.

It was scarcely calculated to win him approval from their Lordships; certainly none from Bligh, but there was, Laurence with a little dark humour acknowledged, something liberating in having nothing whatsoever of which he might be robbed by the law: not even hope. He looked at the egg, himself: he did not hold himself up as an expert, but the shell was certainly harder than it had been, aboard ship, and with that same brittle, slightly thinning quality which he remembered a little from Temeraire’s hatching, and Iskierka’s.

‘We could take no one else with us,’ Laurence said, ‘at least, not consenting; and there would be something curious in abducting an aviator to make him a captain: the fellow could not help but be doubted, afterwards.’

‘Well, to be perfectly honest I think it just as well not to take any of them,’ Temeraire said. ‘I do not think much of the lot: they were all quite unpleasant, on the ship, and they will think they have a right to the eggs, even though they had nothing to do with making them, and I have been taking care of them all this while. They have nothing to recommend them, any more than Rankin does: I don’t suppose the hatchling will want any of them.’

‘We are in too much disgrace, my dear, to expect to see any of them display to advantage,’ Laurence said, ‘but Lieutenant Forthing at least is held a good officer, Granby tells me, and fought with courage at the battle of Shoeburyness.’

‘Oh, he is the worst of them!’ Temeraire said, immediately censorious, though Laurence did not quite know what had provoked such a degree of heat, ‘and I don’t care if we are in disgrace; that is no excuse for behaving like a scrub. Besides,’ Temeraire added, ‘he is wretchedly untidy: strings coming out of his coat, and his trousers patched; even Rankin does not look ragged.’

‘Rankin,’ Laurence said, ‘is the third son of an earl, and can afford to be nice in his clothing; I am afraid Mr. Forthing was a foundling in the dockyards at Dover, and taken on for creeping into the coverts as a child to sleep next the dragons: he has no kin in the world.’

‘He might still brush his coat,’ Temeraire said, obstinately. ‘No: I should quite prefer no-one at all, to him; I am sure Arkady would be quite disgusted with me if I should allow it.’ He leaned over to look at the egg, and put out his thin forked tongue to touch the shell.

‘I cannot quarrel with you on this point, if he has left the egg in your charge,’ Laurence said. ‘The judgment must be yours. In any case, it would be difficult to manage. We must also contrive some covering, for the egg; and—’

‘Oh,’ Temeraire said, ‘oh no, whatever are you doing?’

Laurence paused in confusion. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘No, Laurence; I am speaking to the egg,’ Temeraire said, raising his head with an expression of consternation, his ruff flattened against his neck. ‘It is hatching; however are we to get it away, now?’

‘Only remember, you must put up with him for a little while,’ Temeraire informed the egg, as it rocked a little more, ‘as otherwise he can make no end of trouble for everyone, but it will only be a few minutes, and then you may choose someone else, or to have no one at all. And if he puts anything on you which you do not like, only wait a moment, and I will take it away directly. You might,’ he added a little exasperated, ‘have waited in the shell a little longer, until we had gone away and you were quite safe: anyone would think you were not listening to me at all.’

‘Captain Granby, if you would be so good as to remove the egg from the prospect of any more interference,’ Rankin said, as he and the party of officers came up the track and onto the promontory, ‘I would be grateful; if it would suit you, I should like to arrange the hatching here,’ indicating the place where he stood, quite near the track and a distance from the promontory’s edge.

Temeraire flared out his ruff: Rankin indeed had the leather hood which Laurence had spoken of, and a heavy net with chains, such as Temeraire had once been held down with, shipboard during a typhoon; he had not liked it at all. ‘Remember, only a moment,’ he hissed at the egg, and then reluctantly let the aviators take it away: at least they were very careful, carrying it.

When it was in place, Rankin detailed a couple of the younger officers, midshipmen, to stand on the other side of the egg with the mesh netting, as though they would entangle the poor hatchling if it should try and fly away. To add insult to injury, a boy was leading a handsome sheep on a string behind him, and as soon as the first crack had appeared, Rankin nodded, and two men butchered it into a tub — a lovely hot smell of fresh blood — and brought it over. Temeraire thought it quite unfair — one was so hungry, breaking the shell; it would be so very difficult to resist — and wondered if perhaps he ought take the meat away.

‘Granby,’ Iskierka said, pricking up her spikes as she also observed, ‘I do not see why we should not have bought a sheep or two, ourselves; or a cow. I am sure we have enough money.’

‘It wouldn’t be polite, dear one,’ Granby said.

‘I don’t see why,’ Iskierka said. ‘Temeraire might have money, too, if he were as clever at taking prizes as I am; it is not my fault he shouldn’t have arranged things better, and I needn’t eat kangaroo to make up for it.’

‘Pray let’s discuss it later,’ Granby said, hastily. ‘The egg is hatching, anyway.’

The shell did not crack neatly, Temeraire noted with a critical eye; instead it fractured off in bits and pieces, and then the hatchling finally smashed its way out in a very messy burst, shaking itself loose. It was not very pretty, either, in his opinion: it was grey all over like Wringe, save for two very broad red streaks of colour sweeping from the breastbone and under the wing-joints to trail out in spots along the backbone into its long, skinny tail.

‘Good conformation,’ Granby said to Laurence, under his breath. ‘Blast it! Shoulders as strong as you could like.’

The hatchling was quite heavily built forward, Temeraire supposed; and it had very clever snatching front claws, which it used almost at once: Rankin stepped forward with two quick steps, holding the hood; but to Temeraire’s delight, the hatchling snapped out its wrists and seizing hold dragged it away from him and said, ‘No, I won’t have any of that,’ and setting its teeth in the other end tore it quite apart with a slash of its talons.

It flung the pieces down on the ground, with an air of satisfaction. ‘There; now, take it away, and give me the meat.’

Rankin recovered, despite this setback, and said, ‘You may have it as soon as you have put on the harness.’

‘You needn’t, at all,’ Temeraire put in, ignoring the looks of disapprobation which the aviators flung at him. ‘You can take yourself a perfectly tasty kangaroo, anytime you like.’

‘Well, I don’t like; what I like is the smell of that meat over there,’ the hatchling said, and put its head over on its side considering. ‘As for you: you are an earl’s son, is it?’ it inquired of Rankin intently. ‘An especially good earl?’

Rankin looked a little taken aback, and said after a pause, ‘My father’s creation dates from the twelfth century.’

‘Yes, but, is he rich?’ the hatchling said.

‘I hope,’ Rankin said, ‘that I may not be so impolite as to speak crassly of my family’s circumstances.’

‘Well, that may be pretty-spoken, but it don’t tell me anything useful,’ the hatchling said. ‘Does he have any cows?’

Rankin hesitated, visibly torn, and then said, ‘I believe there are some dairy farms on his estates — several hundred head among them, I imagine.’

‘Good, good,’ the dragonet said, approvingly. ‘Well, let us have a look at this harness, and as long as you are busy being polite, you might give me a taste while I am thinking it over; I do like your hair,’ it added; Temeraire did have to admit Rankin’s was of a particularly appealing shade of yellow which looked a little like gold in the sunlight, ‘and your coat, although that fellow has nicer buttons,’ meaning Granby, ‘but I suppose you can have some like that put on?’

‘But you do not want him, at all!’ Temeraire said. ‘He is an extremely unpleasant person, and neglected Levitas dreadfully, although Levitas was forever trying to please him, and then Levitas died, and it was all his doing.’

‘Yes, so you have said, over and over, while I was getting ready to come out; and all I have to say is, this Levitas fellow sounds a right bore,’ the dragonet said, ‘and I shall like to have a captain who is the son of an earl, and rich, too; I don’t aim to be eating kangaroo day-in and day-out, thank you; or hurrying about catching prizes for myself, either. But that,’ he added, looking at the harness which Rankin was with a slightly uncertain air proffering, ‘is not nice enough by half: those buckles are dirty, it looks to me.’

‘They are certainly dirty,’ Temeraire put in urgently, ‘and so was Levitas’s harness, all the while: quite covered with dirt, and Rankin would not even let him bathe.’

‘This is only a temporary harness,’ Rankin said, adding tentatively, ‘and I shall have a nicer made for you, chased with gold,’ in what Temeraire felt was a quite shameful bargaining sort of manner.

‘Ah, now that sounds more like,’ the dragonet said.

‘And I shall give you a name, straightaway,’ Rankin added, with more firmness. ‘We shall call you Serenitus—‘

‘I have been thinking Conquistador, myself,’ the dragonet interrupted him, ‘or perhaps Caesar; only as I understand it, the conquistadors came out of it with a good deal more gold.’

‘No one is going to call you Caesar,’ Temeraire said, revolted. ‘You are only going to be a middleweight, anyway, if you are that big: Wringe is not even as big as a Reaper.’

‘You never know,’ the dragonet said unfazed. ‘It is better to be prepared. I think Caesar will suit me very well, now I think about it a little more.’

‘Well, I wash my hands of it all,’ Temeraire said to Laurence, afterwards, more than a little aggravated watching Caesar, ‘Oh! How ridiculous — eating a second sheep!’ Rankin had sent out for it, after Caesar had eaten all the first one, down to the scraps, and suggested with a very transparent air that perhaps eating quite a lot while he was fresh-hatched would help him to grow bigger. ‘And I do not believe that at all,’ he added.

‘Well, my dear, they seem to me admirably suited,’ Laurence said dryly. ‘Only I am damned if I know what we are to do now.’

Chapter Four

‘Laurence, I hope you will forgive me,’ Granby said, low, while across the way Caesar continued his depredations upon the livestock which Rankin had evidently intended for his first week of feedings. ‘I didn’t mean to say a word, unless he should manage to harness the beast; but he has, and there is no way around it — you must let me go-between, and make up the quarrel.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Laurence said, doubtfully, certain he had misunderstood; but Granby shook his head and said, ‘I know it’s not what you are used to; but pray don’t be stiff-necked about it: there can’t be two captains in a covert at dagger-ends forever and anon, and you can’t fight him; so it must be made up, whatever you think of the blighted wretch,’ he added, rather failing at conciliation.

It was by no means what Laurence was used to; the thought of offering Rankin anything so like apology, for an act which had been richly merited by his behaviour, and which Laurence would gladly have drawn swords to justify, appalled more than he could easily bear.

‘You needn’t think of it that way,’ Granby said, ‘for it’s only that you have the heavier beast, you know: that is the rule. It’s for you to make the first gesture; he can’t, without looking shy.’

Laurence could not be so easily reconciled, despite all the obvious sense in this policy, to a gesture which to him partook of the worst part of both withdrawal and deceit. ‘For I do not withdraw, John; I cannot withdraw in the least. It would be rankest falsehood for me to pretend in any way to regret my actions, or any offence which was given by them; and under the circumstances, such a withdrawal must bear a character of self-interest which I must despise.’

‘Lord, I am not saying you must truckle to the fellow!’ Granby said, with a look half affection and half exasperation. ‘Nothing of the sort; you only need to let me go forward, and have a word with him, and then you shan’t speak of it again, either of you: that is all. No one will think any less of you: the contrary, for it would be rotten for the dragonet, you know. If you are giving his captain the go-by, it must make a quarrel between him and Temeraire, too, and you can’t say that is fair.’

This argument had too much justice for Laurence to ignore; he managed barely to make himself nod, once, by way of granting permission, and looked the other way when Rankin joined Granby’s table that night, in a small hostelry, for the dinner which should honour his promotion. Granby cast a worried look at him, sidelong, and said to Rankin, in tones of slightly excessive heartiness, ‘I am afraid Caesar means to lead you something of a merry chase, sir; a most determined beast.’

Granby, who had more knowledge of the management of a determined if not obstreperous beast than any ten men, might have been pardoned for some degree of private satisfaction in this remark. ‘If it is any consolation,’ he had said to Laurence, earlier, rather more frankly, ‘the little beast is his just deserts, anyway: how I will laugh to see him dragged hither and yon, protesting all he likes that Caesar must obey. That creature won’t take being shot off in a corner and left to rot.’

Laurence could not wholly take amusement in any part of the circumstances which forced him to endure Rankin’s company; but he did not deny a certain grim satisfaction, which became incredulous when Rankin answered, coolly, ‘You are very mistaken, Captain Granby; I anticipate nothing of the sort.

‘That there has been some mismanagement of the egg, I cannot dispute,’ Rankin added, ‘nor that his hatching did not give cause for concerns such as you have described: but I have been most heartened since those first moments to find Caesar a most complaisant creature by nature. Indeed, it is not too far to say I think him a most remarkable beast, quite out of the common way in intelligence and in tractability.’

Laurence forgot his feelings in bemusement and Granby looked equally at a loss for response, when so far as they had seen, Caesar had spent the afternoon demonstrating only an insistent gluttony. Perhaps Rankin chose to deceive himself, rather than think himself overmatched, Laurence wondered; but Rankin added, with a self-satisfaction that seemed past mere wishful thinking, ‘I have already begun instructing him on better principles, and I have every hope of shaping him into the attentive and obedient beast which must be the ambition of every aviator. Already he begins to partake of my sentiments and understanding as he ought, and to value my opinion over all others.’

‘Well,’ Granby said doubtfully, then, ‘Mr. Forthing, the bottle stands by you,’ and the conversation limped away into a fresh direction; but in the morning Laurence was astonished to find Rankin at the promontory, with a book, to attend Caesar’s breakfast. He seated himself at Caesar’s side and began to read to the dragonet as the beast ate: an aviation manual of some sort, Laurence collected from what he overheard, although the language was very peculiar.

‘Oh, he has never dug up that antique thing,’ Granby said, with disgust, and added, ‘It is from the Tudor age, I think; all about how to manage a dragon. We read it in school, but I cannot think of anyone who gives it a thought anymore.’

Caesar listened very attentively, however, while he gnawed on a bone, and said earnestly, ‘My dear captain, I cannot disagree at all, it seems very sensible indeed; pray do you think I ought to try and manage another sheep? I take it quite to heart, what the book says about the importance of early feeding. If it accords with your judgment, of course: I am wholly willing to be guided by your superior experience; but I must say I find I am so much better able to attend when I am quite full.’

‘This,’ Iskierka said, ‘is what comes of worrying about hatchlings.’

Temeraire did not think that was very just: he had not worried about Caesar for very long, certainly, and at the present moment he would not have given one scrap of liver for all Caesar’s health and happiness; not, of course, that Caesar seemed to be in any short supply of either. In one week he had eaten nine sheep, an entire cow, a tunny, and even three kangaroos, after Rankin had been forced to reconsider the speed at which he was depleting his funds.

That would have been quite enough to make him intolerable, particularly the smacking, gloating way in which he took his gluttonous meals, but apart from these offensive habits, he would strut, and wake one up out of a pleasant drowse in the midday heat by singing out loudly, ‘Oh, my captain is coming to see me,’ and he would with very great satisfaction inform Rankin that he was looking very fine, that day, and make a pointed note of every bit of gold or decoration which he wore.

The one consolation which Temeraire had promised himself, Rankin’s certain neglect, which should also ensure his absence, did not materialize: instead Rankin was forever coming, and so Temeraire did not only have to endure Caesar, but Rankin also, and hear his irritating voice all the day, reading out from this absurd book full of nonsense about how one ought to never ask questions of one’s captain, and spend all one’s time practising formation-manoeuvres.

‘I cannot understand in the least,’ Temeraire complained, ‘why when he had the very nicest of dragons, he was never to be seen; and now one cannot be rid of him. I have even hinted a little that he might take himself off, in the afternoons when it is so very hot and one wishes only to sleep, but he will never go.’

‘I imagine he had a better chance of society more to his liking, in Britain,’ Laurence said. ‘He was a courier-captain on light duty, and might easily visit friends of his social order; he has never been a particular favourite, among other aviators.’

‘No, I am sure he has not,’ Temeraire said, disgustedly.

Meanwhile there was no end of trouble to be seen, because the company Rankin did keep, aside from Caesar, was Governor Bligh, whom Temeraire had now classed a thoroughly unpleasant sort of person: not surprising when one considered he was part of Government. Bligh certainly had some notion that when Caesar was a little more grown, Rankin would help put him back in his post; Temeraire had even overheard Rankin discussing the matter with Caesar.

‘Oh, certainly,’ Caesar said, ‘I will always be happy to oblige you, my dear captain; and Governor Bligh. It is of the first importance that our colony—’ Our colony, Temeraire fumed silently, ‘—should have the finest leadership.

‘I understand,’ he added, ‘that governors have quite a great deal of power; is that not so? They may give grants of land?’

Rankin paused and said, ‘Yes; unclaimed land is in the governor’s gift.’

‘Just so, just so,’ Caesar said. ‘I understand it takes a great deal of land to raise cattle, and sheep; I am sure Governor Bligh must be well aware of it.’

‘A clever beast,’ Laurence said dryly, when Temeraire with indignation had repeated this exchange to him. ‘I am afraid, my dear, we may find ourselves quite at a stand.’

‘Laurence,’ Temeraire said, shocked, ‘Laurence, surely you do not imagine he could beat me. If ever he tried to cause us any difficulty—’

‘If you were ever to come on to blows,’ Laurence said, ‘we should already be well in the soup; such a conflict must at all costs be avoided. Even in defeat, he might easily do you a terrible injury, and to run such a risk, for the reward only of making yourself more an outlaw and terrifying to the local populace, cannot be a rational choice. Consider that every week now brings us closer to word from England, and I trust the establishment of a new order.’

‘Which,’ Temeraire said, ‘is likely to be just as bad as Bligh, I expect.’

‘So long as we are not responsible for either its establishment or its destruction,’ Laurence said grimly, ‘and neither its hated enemy nor its cosseted ally, our situation can only be improved.’

‘I do not see very well how,’ Temeraire said, brooding over the matter; he was not quite certain he saw it the same way, ‘if we must stay here for some time…?’ He paused, interrogatively.

Laurence did not immediately answer. ‘I am afraid so,’ he said, at last, quietly, ‘The waste of your abilities is very nearly criminal, my dear, and Jane will do her best by us, of course; but with matters as they are among the unharnessed beasts in England, and such reports as Bligh is already likely to make of us, I must not counsel you to hope for a quick recall.’

Temeraire could not fail to see that Laurence was quite downcast by his own words. ‘Why, I am sure it will be perfectly pleasant to remain a while,’ Temeraire said, stoutly, making sure to tuck his wings to his sides in a complaisant sort of way. ‘Only if we are to remain,’ he did not allow any disappointment to colour his words, ‘then it seems to me that Caesar is right on this one point: we ought have better leadership, who can arrange it so we can have proper food, and everything nice — perhaps even a pavilion, with some shade and water, against all this heat. We might even build some roads as wide as in China, and put the pavilions directly in the town; just like a properly civilized country.’

‘We cannot hope to promote such a project, however desirable, without the support of civil authority; you cannot force the change wholesale,’ Laurence said; he paused and added, low, ‘We might make such a bargain, with Bligh, I expect; he cannot be insensible of your much greater strength, and he knows he requires at least our complaisance, even if he has Rankin’s aid.’

‘But Laurence, I do not like Bligh at all,’ Temeraire said. ‘I have quite settled it that he is a bounder: he will say anything, and do anything, and be friendly to anyone, only to be back as governor; but I do not think it is because he wishes so much to do anything pleasant or nice for anyone.’

‘No, he wishes only to be vindicated, I believe,’ Laurence answered, ‘and revenged. Not without cause,’ he added, ‘but—’ He stopped and shook his head. ‘There would be a species of tyranny in it, when they have ruled so long and without argument from the citizenry.’

Temeraire brooded on further afterwards, that afternoon, while Caesar discussed enthusiastically with Rankin plans for an elaborate cattle farm, quite exploding Temeraire’s hopes of napping. He was beginning to understand strongly the sentiment that beggars could not be choosers. No one would ever have chosen to be trapped here; but now he must make the best of it, for himself and for Laurence. Temeraire dismally recognized that he had solaced himself, by thinking that Iskierka was only a wretched pirate, really, and her excesses for Granby in poor taste, which Laurence would not have liked, anyway. But now here was Rankin, too, also wearing gold buttons, and he was a captain still, as Laurence ought have been. There was no thinking two ways about it: Temeraire had not taken proper care of him; he had quite mismanaged the situation.

‘Demane,’ Temeraire said, lifting his head, and speaking in the Xhosa language, so Rankin could not sneak and overhear, nor Caesar; Demane looked up from where he was figuring out sums with Roland, or rather, giving his sums to Sipho to figure out for him, while he instead cleaned yet another old flintlock; he had acquired another four in the town, lately. ‘Demane, do you remember that fellow who was here the other day, MacArthur? Will you go into town and find out where he lives; and take him a message?’

‘I cannot but feel I have — I am — mismanaging the situation,’ Laurence said sombrely, tapping his hand restlessly upon the table until he noticed his own fidgeting, which even then required an effort to cease.

From wishing only to have the decision taken out of his own hands, Laurence now found he did not think he could be easy in his mind to watch the colony’s leaders deposed and, as he increasingly thought Bligh’s intention, executed without even awaiting word from England. ‘But if Rankin should move in his support, I cannot avoid the decision: either we must stand by or intervene. I hope,’ he added ruefully, ‘that I am not so petty as to have more sympathy for Johnston and MacArthur, and the less for Bligh, only because Rankin has ranged himself alongside him.’

‘You might have a worse reason,’ Tharkay said. ‘At least you cannot call the decision self-interested; his restoration would be more to your advantage.’

‘Not unless it is by my own doing,’ Laurence said, ‘which I cannot reconcile with a sense of justice; and I doubt even that would serve,’ he added, pessimism sharp in his mouth. ‘Even to act must rouse fresh suspicions; we are damned in either direction, when all they want of us is quiet obedience.’

‘If you will pardon my saying so,’ Tharkay said, ‘you will never satisfy them on that point: the last thing you or Temeraire will ever give anyone is quiet obedience. Have you considered it might be better not to try?’

Laurence would have liked to protest this remark: he believed in the discipline of the service, and still felt himself at heart a serving officer; if he had been forced beyond the bounds of proper submission to authority, it had been most unwillingly. But denial froze in his throat; that excuse was worth precisely the value that their Lordships would have put upon it, which was none.

Tharkay left him to wrestle with it a moment, then added, ‘There are alternatives, if you wished to consider them.’

‘To sit here on the far side of the world, seeing Temeraire wholly wasted on the business of breeding, and condemned to tedium and the absence of all society?’ Laurence said, tiredly. ‘We might, I suppose, do some work for the colony: ferry goods, and assist with the construction of roads—’

‘You might go to sea,’ Tharkay said, and Laurence looked at him in surprise. ‘No, I am not speaking fancifully. You remember, perhaps, Avram Maden?’

Laurence nodded, a little surprised: he had not heard the merchant’s name from Tharkay since they had left Istanbul, nor that of Maden’s daughter; and Laurence had himself avoided any mention of either for fear of giving pain. ‘I must consider myself yet in his debt; I hope he does well. He did not come under any suspicion, after our escape?’

‘No; I believe we made a sufficiently dramatic exit to satisfy the Turks without their seeking for conspirators.’ Tharkay paused, and then his mouth twisted a little. ‘He has been lately presented with his first grandson,’ he added.

‘Ah,’ Laurence said, and reached over to fill Tharkay’s glass.

Tharkay raised it to him silently and drank. A minute passed, then leaving the subject with nothing more said, he abruptly said, ‘I am engaged to perform a service for the directors of the East India Company, at his request; and as I understand it, several of those gentlemen are interested in outfitting privateers, to strike at the French trade in the Pacific.’

‘Yes?’ Laurence said politely, wondering how this should apply to his situation. What service those merchant lords might require, in this still-small port, Laurence could not understand, though it explained at least why Tharkay had come, and then he realized, starting back a little in his chair, that Tharkay meant this as a suggestion.

‘I could scarcely fit Temeraire on a privateer,’ he said, wondering a little that Tharkay could imagine it done: it was not as though he had not seen Temeraire.

‘Without having broached the subject with the gentlemen in question,’ Tharkay said, ‘I will nevertheless go so far as to assure you that the practicalities would be managed, if you were willing. Ships can be built to carry dragons, where interest exists; and a dragon who can sink any vessel afloat must command interest.’

He spoke with certainty; and Laurence could take his point. A dragon could never ordinarily be obtained for such a purpose; as yet they were the exclusive province of the state. They and the first-rates and transports which could bear a dragon were devoted to blockade duty, and to naval warfare, not to the quick and stinging pursuit of the enemy’s shipping. Temeraire would be unopposed, and a privateer so armed would be virtually at liberty to take any ship which it encountered.

Laurence did not know how to answer. There was nothing dishonourable in privateering, nothing dishonourable in the least. He had known several men formerly of the Navy embark on the enterprise and had not diminished in respect for them at all.

‘I doubt the government would deny you a letter of marque,’ Tharkay said.

‘No,’ Laurence said. It would surely suit their Lordships admirably. Temeraire wreaking a wholesale destruction among French shipping would be a great improvement over Temeraire sitting idly in New South Wales, with none of the risks attendant on bringing him back to the front and once again into the company of other impressionable beasts, which he might lure into sedition.

‘I will not urge it on you,’ Tharkay said. ‘If you should care for the introduction, however, I would be at your service.’

‘But that sounds quite splendid,’ Temeraire said, with real enthusiasm, when Laurence had laid the proposal before him in only the barest terms. ‘I am sure we should take any number of prizes; Iskierka should have nothing on it. How long do you suppose it would be, for them to build us a ship?’

Laurence only with difficulty persuaded him to consider it as anything other than a settled thing; Temeraire was already inclined to be making plans for the use of his future wealth. ‘You could not wish to remain here, instead?’ Temeraire said. ‘Not, of course, that I mean to suggest there is anything wrong here,’ he added unconvincingly.

The mornings and late evenings were now the only, and scarcely, bearable times of day, and they had begun to stretch them with early rising and late nights; the sun was only just up over the harbour, spilling a broad swath of light across the water running into all the bays of the harbour, making them glow out brilliantly white against the dark curve of the land rising away, blackish-green and silent. Temeraire had not eaten in two days: the stretch was not markedly unhealthy, given his inaction, but Laurence feared it was due largely to a secret disdain for his food, the regrettable consequence of Temeraire having grown fussy in his tastes, a grave danger for a military man — and there Laurence was forced again to the recollection that they were neither of them military, any longer.

Even so, there was an advantage to a stronger stomach: he himself, subject to shipboard provisions during the most ravenous years of his life, could subsist on weeviled biscuit and salt pork indefinitely; even though he had not often had to endure those conditions. Temeraire had too early in his life developed a finicky palate; and Gong Su had done what was in his power, but he had made quite clear one could not turn a lean, scrub-fed game animal, half bone and sinew and anatomical oddities, into a fat and nicely marbled piece of beef; Laurence was considering if his finances could stretch to the provision of some cattle, at least for a treat.

‘There is Caesar’s breakfast,’ Temeraire said, with a sigh, as the mournful lowing of a cow came towards them from the bottom of the hill; but when it was brought up, by an only slightly less reluctant youth, he delivered it not to Caesar but to them, stammering compliments of Mr. MacArthur, and for Laurence there was an invitation card, asking him to supper.

‘I wonder he should make such a gesture,’ Laurence said, rather taken aback: it was one thing for MacArthur to bring himself to the covert, however irregularly organized, in an official outpost — but quite another to invite Laurence to his home in mixed company likely overseen by his wife. ‘I wonder at it indeed; unless,’ he added, low, ‘he has had some intelligence of Rankin’s interest in Bligh’s case: that might make sufficient motive even for this.’

‘Umm,’ Temeraire said indistinctly, nibbling around a substantial thigh-bone his attention fixed notably on Gong Su’s enthusiastic preparations: the cow had been butchered, and was going into the earth with what greenstuffs had passed muster and some cracked wheat; even Caesar had peeled open an eye and was looking over with covert interest.

The hour was fixed sufficiently late that they could wait until the heat of the day had passed and travel at the beginning of twilight; Temeraire, having made a splendid meal, carried him aloft into the softening but yet unbroken blue: no clouds, yet again, all the day. What would have made an hour’s journey on horse, across rough country, was an easy ten minutes flight dragonback, and there was a wide fallow field open near the house, where Temeraire could set down.

‘Pray thank him for my cow,’ Temeraire said, contentedly settling himself to nap. ‘It was very handsome of him, and I do not think he is a coward anymore, after all.’

Laurence crossed the field to the house, and paused to knock the dirt from his boots before he stepped into the lane: he had worn trousers, and Hessians, more suitable to flying; but in concession to the invitation, he had made an effort with his cravat, and put on his better coat. A groom came out, and looked about confused for Laurence’s horse before pointing him to the door: the house was comfortable but not especially grand, built practically and made for work, but there was an elegance and taste in the arrangements.

He was shown into the salon, and a company heavily slanted: only four women to seven men, most of those in officers’ uniforms; one of the women rose, as Mr. MacArthur came to join him, and he presented her to Laurence as his wife, Elizabeth.

‘I hope you will forgive the informality of our society, Mr. Laurence,’ she said, when he had bowed over her hand. ‘We are grown sadly careless in this wild country, and the heat crushes all aspirations to stiffness. I hope you did not have a very tiring ride.’

‘Not at all; Temeraire brought me,’ Laurence said. ‘He is in your southwest field; I trust it no inconvenience.’

‘Why, none,’ she said, though her eyes had widened, and one of the officers said, ‘Do you mean you have that monster sitting out in the yard?’

‘That monster’s sharpest weapon is his tongue,’ MacArthur said. ‘I am pretty well cut to ribbons yet: did the cow sweeten him at all?’

‘As much as you might like, sir,’ Laurence said, dryly. ‘You have quite hit on the point of weakness.’

The supper was, for all the ulterior motives likely to have been its inspiration, a comfortable and civilized affair: Laurence had not quite known what to expect, from the colonial society, but Mrs. MacArthur was plainly a woman of some character, and though indeed never striving for a formality which both the climate and the situation of the colony would have rendered tiresome and a little absurd, she directed the style of their gathering nevertheless. She could not have a balanced table, so she served the meal in two courses, inviting her guests to refresh themselves in between with a little walking in the gardens, illuminated with lamps, and rearranging the seating on their return to partner the ladies afresh.

The meal was thoughtfully suited to the weather as well: a cool soup of fresh cucumber and mint, meat served in jellied aspic, beef very thinly carved from the joint, lightly boiled chicken; and instead of pudding an array of cakes, with pots of jam, and excellent, fragrant tea; all served on porcelain of the very highest quality, the one real extravagance Laurence noticed: dishes of white and that particularly delicate shade of blue which could not be achieved by any European art, and the strength of real quality.

He noticed it to his hostess with compliments; to his surprise she looked a little crestfallen, and said, ‘Oh, you have found out my weakness, Mr. Laurence; I could not resist them, although I know very well I oughtn’t: they must be smuggled, of course.’

‘Do not say it aloud!’ MacArthur cried. ‘So long as you do not know it for certain, you may ha’e your dishes, and we our tea; and long may the rascals thrive.’

One of the many charges Bligh had laid at the rebels’ door had been the practice of smuggling: the back alleys and trading houses of Sydney were flooded with goods from China, which from the price alone one could tell had evaded the East India Company’s monopoly on such trade. ‘And I expect he would blame us for the drought, too, if he heard me say I thought the weather would hold clear another month,’ MacArthur said, offering a glass of port, when the ladies had left them.

‘I don’t say we have never brought in some goods which a governor might not approve of,’ he continued, ‘but I am speaking of rum, which we must have; you cannot get a man to work here, except you fill his glass, and with more than you can pour at five shillings the bottle. A damned folly, too: a pickled liver cannot tell good dark West Indian rum from the Bengali stuff. But we cannot even bring in that, now: there is not a smell of any kind of goods, from Africa, since the Cape was lost.

‘As for the China goods, by God! If I could make a profit selling China ware at two pounds a box in Sydney, with all the cost and risk of freight, I would be packing it on ships for England, instead, and die rich as Croesus. There are fellows making a pretty penny selling it on, I believe, even when they can only buy it one box at a time.’

There was a general murmur of agreement, and some anecdotes of trading agreements followed: it seemed to Laurence the officers all were tradesmen also, in some measure, and the tradesmen all former officers, and many of them landed as well: they made no distinction amongst themselves, and perhaps could not have, if there were not men of business enough established in the colony to provide opportunities for investment, or their rough-and-tumble fortunes not yet sufficiently realized in coin to take advantage of them.

MacArthur drew him aside, as the cigars were offered around and lit, and to the open doors looking into the gardens: squeaking small bats were flying now in clouds around the trees where earlier they had slept, hanging. ‘I am grateful to you for coming,’ he said. ‘We gave you little enough reason to do so.’

‘You are a good host, sir,’ Laurence said, ‘and it is a welcome I had not looked for.’

‘Governor Bligh would call me a traitor, so far as that goes: has done oft enough, I imagine,’ MacArthur said, ‘and would hang me for it, too. I will not pretend, sir, to be anything less than deeply interested, under the circumstances. I said to you, I believe, that I am ready to stand judgment for my acts; and so I am, but I don’t care to be marched to the scaffold before it is handed down.’

Laurence looked out at the gardens a little grimly: they were wilting in the heat, yet still restful to look upon, neatly arranged; beyond them spread wide fields. He was conscious that MacArthur’s establishment made a powerful argument in support of his claim to have made something of himself, and in an isolate and difficult country to have carried forward the banner of civilization: uniting all the taste and respectability which was absent from the sad and rackety condition of the town. So long from England and longer yet from any respectability, Laurence could feel the force of that argument all the more strongly.

‘Sir,’ he answered, ‘I can well understand your desire; but forgive me, I will not commit myself, and moreover Temeraire, to any course of action in advance. I have a reputation which may make me seem more a friend to rebellion than I am by any willing choice; and for that part, my assistance might not be an unmitigated boon to you, if you had it.’

‘And, if you will allow me to be blunt,’ MacArthur said, ‘for your part, you would be in a pretty position, standing in the way of seeing Governor Bligh restored, if a frigate should come in a couple of weeks, declare us the worst unhanged scoundrels south of the line, and the Governor to be put back into place at gunpoint. No, sir; I do not ask any man, so unconnected to me as you are, to put his neck on the chopping-block with mine; but if you are amenable enough to listen, I had rather propose to you a means of evading the issue entirely.’

He drew Laurence into his study, and on the desk drew out the maps of the colony, and the penning mountain range about it, a great labyrinthine mass of gorges and peaks, only vaguely sketched. ‘All our purposes can march together,’ MacArthur said. ‘You wish to be well out of the affair; just so: I wish you out of it also, and every other dragon in the place with you, at least long enough for our doom to arrive. It cannot be long now, when the last frigate brought the post only a month behind our news.’

His proposal was an expedition whose purpose should be to find a crossing over the Blue Mountains, and establish a cattle-drive road from the colony to the open territory beyond, ‘where,’ he continued, ‘you may set up this covert your beasts will require, and take yourselves all the land you might like: I cannot see how anyone can complain, when you have opened the passage yourselves.

‘Captain Granby is senior, I think,’ he added, ‘and can I suppose order this Captain Rankin on such a mission: if this new creature means to go on eating as he has begun, it seems to me you had all better be thinking of how to feed him, particularly as you have two more hatchlings to come.’

‘I am afraid it must keep you here a little longer,’ Laurence said, rather diffident in making the suggestion: he could not like asking Granby to enter into such a stratagem, however practical.

He felt himself caught between shoals and a lee-shore, in an unfamiliar channel: MacArthur’s machinations were no more noble than Bligh’s in their ends, and likely less; even if in their forthrightness more appealing, and with the benefit of MacArthur’s greater charm of person. And they were neither of them looking beyond the parochial boundaries of their quarrel, to the titanic struggle creeping ever more widely over the world. If either of them gave a thought to the war, Laurence could not discover it, and though they might gladly make him any promises which would make of him the useful ally they desired, they neither of them recognized in any real way the colossal folly of wasting Temeraire in this isolate part of the world.

It was enough to make him look again at Tharkay’s suggestion: Laurence could easily long for the sea-wind in his face and the open ocean, and at least the comfort of doing some rather than no good, even if that small and diversionary. Something in his heart curled away from the mercenary life; but he was not certain he ought let that stand in his way, and Temeraire’s. If there was no honour in it, neither could he see any here, at best errand-runners for an indifferent overseer, and at worst pawns in a selfish squabbling.

MacArthur’s proposal offered, however, at least a temporary escape from all these alternatives; Laurence was at present in the mood to be satisfied with small blessings. ‘But I would not in the least press it upon you,’ he added, ‘and I hope you will not act in any way contrary to your judgment, nor—’

Nor, he meant to add: in excessive haste, but Granby broke in on him before he could. ‘For God’s sake let us go first thing in the morning,’ Granby said passionately. ‘I have been living in mortal terror every day I should wake up and find myself a hundred miles into the interior: she keeps talking of going to look for elephants. What I am to do if Rankin will not come, though, I cannot tell you. No one can argue Iskierka isn’t in a different class, but I have no official orders to be here, where he does; and seniority is a sad puzzle: he was a captain first, even if he hasn’t had a dragon for years.’

‘I suggest you do not concern yourselves until the event,’ Tharkay said, ‘if it should arise,’ and shrugged when Rankin, to Laurence’s private surprise, made no objections either to the project or to Granby’s assertion of rank. ‘Bligh’s support was desirable to him when he thought you might try to deny him the egg,’ Tharkay said. ‘Now he can only gain very little and risk much by committing himself; I imagine he is perfectly satisfied to have you provide him a convenient excuse to withdraw, particularly when Granby must soon depart and restore his precedence.’

Laurence could of course not look upon the expedition with anything like pleasure, save the meagre sort involved in escaping a worse outcome. There was nothing attractive in the prospect of shepherding a gang of convicts, and a month in Rankin’s company would have been a most effective punishment in quarters less confined than a small encampment; and for insult to add upon these injuries, he might also expect the hostility of the rest of the aviators.

‘I know they have made clods of themselves, but you had better have at least one officer,’ Granby said, scratching out a haphazard list of the aviators on the back of a napkin, in his shipboard cabin, as he chose which men to assign to Temeraire and to Iskierka, as temporary crews. Laurence of course had been stripped of his subordinates with his rank, and Iskierka had left her own back in Britain when she had decamped without permission to follow them, taking only Granby. ‘Will you take Forthing?’

‘Temeraire has taken him a little in dislike, I find,’ Laurence said.

‘Yes, I know,’ Granby said. ‘I should like to give Forthing a chance to make it up with him; otherwise we will have a job of it to persuade Temeraire to let him make a try for one of the eggs. Not that Forthing is any less a clod than the rest, but at least he is a competent clod. Most of the rest are the flotsam of the Corps as much as the eggs are. That fellow Blincoln is pleased with himself if he manages to round up half a dozen men to put away harness in good order; and I suppose he may as well be, because it don’t happen very often.’

Laurence nodded. ‘We will take Fellowes and Dorset, of course; and Roland and Demane can manage the rest, I expect,’ he said. ‘We ought not take more men than necessary; there can be no need to burden the dragons.’

‘I hope,’ Tharkay said, ‘that I may form one of your party, as well, if it is not inconvenient.’

They looked at him with surprise. After a moment, Laurence said, ‘Certainly, if you like,’ forcibly repressing his curiosity; Granby said, ‘But Lord above, whyever for? We will end with pickaxing our way through solid rock for a month in the worst heat of summer, and there is not a blessed soul out there to be found: unless we see some of the natives, and with three dragons I am pretty sure we won’t.’

Tharkay paused, and then said quietly, ‘You will be surveying first, from aloft; if there is a route in use, that will offer the best chance of seeing it.’

‘If there were a route in use, we shouldn’t have to build one,’ Granby said.

‘I am not expecting to find a road suitable for general use,’ Tharkay said. ‘A mule-track at most, I should think.’

‘But,’ Laurence said, and only barely restrained himself; Granby also had stopped, with an open mouth: but it was too plain Tharkay did not choose to volunteer more; he might easily have done so. ‘Oh, if you like, then,’ Granby said awkwardly, after a moment, looking at Laurence.

‘We should be glad of your company,’ Laurence said, with a bow, and only later, privately to Temeraire expressed his confusion.

‘Maybe he is looking for the smugglers,’ Temeraire said, unconcernedly, nibbling up another portion of sheep stuffed with raisins and grains: MacArthur had sent another present that morning, letting no grass grow. Laurence stared. ‘Well, if someone has a secret road and has not said anything to anyone about it,’ Temeraire offered, having swallowed, ‘it stands to reason they must be hiding it for a reason; and you were just telling me of all these goods from China which are coming in.’

‘It would be a very peculiar way to bring goods into a port city,’ Laurence said, doubtfully, but he recalled Tharkay had engaged himself in service to the directors of the East India Company: at Maden’s request, he might well have undertaken such a task, even if it did not seem a likely explanation for his wishing to accompany their party.

‘But anyone could think of searching the ships and the dockyards, to catch them,’ Temeraire said, and Laurence after a little more consideration had to acknowledge that if the intention was ultimately to ship the goods on to England, the arrangement was ideal: slip the goods into the markets unsuspected, and then any legitimate captain might openly purchase them and carry them onward.

‘They must be landing them in a convenient bay, then, somewhere further up the coast,’ Laurence said, ‘and taking them around by land; but it would be a most circuitous route, through unsettled and dangerous countryside.’

‘There is nothing very dangerous when there is nothing but kangaroos about,’ Temeraire said dismissively.

They decamped in accord with Granby’s fondest wishes, the very next morning, with all the speed and disorder usual to the Aerial Corps and more when travelling so light: the bulk of their baggage was made of simple pickaxes and hammers and shovels, instead of bombshells and gunpowder, and the few tents which would be their shelter. The mountains were richly green despite the summer, even seen from a distance; they might rely on finding sufficient water without trying to carry very much of it as supply, and with a few sacks of biscuit and barrels of salt pork they were ready to depart.

The work gang had been assembled with equal haste: some dozen convicts, having been promised their liberty in exchange for this one service, were herded with difficulty up to the promontory and thence into Temeraire’s belly-rigging. They were an odd, ill-favoured assortment of men, for the most part thin and leathery, with a peculiar similarity to their faces perhaps born of suffering and their preferred mode of consolation: fine trace works of broken red capillaries about the base of their noses, and eyes shot through with blood.

There were a few men who looked a little more suited to the work which lay ahead: a Jonas Green, who might himself have been cut none-too-neatly out of rock, with bulk in his shoulders and his arms; he alone of the convicts was not drunk when they came up to the promontory. A Robert Maynard was rather more fat than substantial, and no one could have accused him of abstinence, but he had reportedly a little skill at stonemasonry, and his hands showed the evidence: callused hard as iron and large out of all proportion, thick-fingered.

‘You had better not mistake him,’ MacArthur said, handing over the manifest of men. ‘Transported for pickpocketing. He cannot do much harm out in the wilderness, but I would advise you keep your purses close when you are coming back.’

Though they were nearly one and all a little intoxicated, and the hour early enough to yet be dark when they had been marched up to the promontory, the convicts balked at dragon transport, seeing Temeraire’s head swinging towards them through the foggy dimness, and were inclined to withdraw at once.

‘It’s more than you can ask a man,’ one almost fragile, reedy-voiced fellow said: Jack Telly, sad-eyed and disappointed in his face, his stunted person incongruous with the aggression of his protest. ‘I can swing a pick all day and all night, and will too, but I ain’t to be thrown in a dragon’s belly without so much as a by-your-leave.’

The general agreement with this sentiment resisted all logic and was only overcome with sufficient doses of rum and cajolery to leave the men in a more or less stupefied state — not unlike the methods used for transporting cattle, Laurence noted with some resignation, before they could at last be marched aboard. Green alone refused the bribery, with a shake of his head when offered a glass; he was one of the convicts who had only lately been brought over in the Allegiance, and rather climbed aboard with no confidence but a stoic resignation: as though he did not care very greatly if he were to be fed to a dragon.

Forthing saw the loading managed efficiently under Temeraire’s darkling gaze and said, ‘I believe we are ready, Mr. Laurence,’ a little stiffly but without open discourtesy: Granby, Laurence thought, had made him a few pointed remarks, on the subject of his prospects and how likely these were to be advanced through behaviour which should irritate the dragon overseeing the remaining eggs that were all his hope of promotion.

‘The eggs are quite secure?’ Temeraire said, nosing down at his own belly, where they had been snugged-in: he had utterly refused to leave them behind, even in Riley’s care.

‘No: for Bligh is still aboard the ship,’ Temeraire had said, ‘and apart from any other mischief he might do them, if one should hatch, I should not be at all surprised if Bligh should try and take it for himself, since Rankin is not going to oblige him after all. I would not worry ordinarily,’ Temeraire had added, ‘but plainly the sea-voyage has affected the eggs badly: that is the only explanation for Caesar, in my opinion,’ with great disapproval.

‘Pray be sure that the little one is in properly,’ Temeraire added now. ‘It would be quite dreadful if it were to slip out.’

‘The netting is tight, and the padding will not shift,’ Laurence said, pulling against the thick hawsers of the belly-netting with his hand, and leaning his weight against it, without much yielding. ‘And we cannot have any fear of the temperature falling too far. Try away, if you will.’

Temeraire reared himself up on his hindquarters and shook; not with quite the usual vigour, as he had too much care for the eggs, but enough to be sure nothing was ready to tumble free or break loose. ‘All lies well,’ he said.

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