Empire of Ivory t-4

by Naomi Novik

  “What?” Lenton looked up. “Oh, Laurence, there was no question of that. No, none at all. I am sorry for the secrecy, but as for not sending the dragons, that called for no decision. There were no dragons to send.”

  Victoriatus heaved his sides out and in, a gentle, measured pace. His nostrils were wide and red, a thick flaking crust around the rims, and a dried pink foam lingered about the corners of his mouth. His eyes were closed, but after every few breaths they would open a little, dull and unseeing with exhaustion; he gave a rasping, hollow cough that flecked the ground before him with blood; and subsided once again into the half-slumber that was all he could manage. His captain, Richard Clark, was lying on a cot beside him: unshaven, in filthy linen, an arm flung up to cover his eyes and the other hand resting on the dragon’s foreleg; he did not move, even when they approached.

  After a few moments, Lenton touched Laurence on the arm. “Come, enough; let’s away.” He turned slowly aside, leaning heavily upon a cane, and took Laurence back up the green hill to the castle. The corridors, as they returned to his offices, seemed no longer peaceful but hushed, sunk in irreparable gloom.

  Laurence refused a glass of wine, too numb to think of refreshment. “It is a sort of consumption,” Lenton said, looking out the windows that faced onto the covert yard; Victoriatus and twelve other great beasts lay screened from one another by the ancient windbreaks, piled branches and stones grown over with ivy.

  “How widespread—?” Laurence asked.

  “Everywhere,” Lenton said. “Dover, Portsmouth, Middlesbrough. The breeding grounds in Wales and Halifax; Gibraltar; everywhere the couriers went on their rounds; everywhere.” He turned away from the windows and took his chair again. “We were inexpressibly stupid; we thought it was only a cold, you see.”

  “But we had word of that before we had even rounded the Cape of Good Hope, on our journey east,” Laurence said, appalled. “Has it lasted so long?”

  “In Halifax it started in September of the year five,” Lenton said. “The surgeons think now it was the American dragon, that big Indian fellow: he was kept there, and then the first dragons to fall sick here were those who had shared the transport with him to Dover; then it began in Wales when he was sent to the breeding grounds there. He is perfectly hearty, not a cough or a sneeze; very nearly the only dragon left in England who is, except for a handful of hatchlings we have tucked away in Ireland.”

  “You know we have brought you another twenty,” Laurence said, taking a brief refuge in making his report.

  “Yes, these fellows from where, Turkestan?” Lenton said, willing to follow. “Did I understand your letter correctly; they were brigands?”

  “I would rather say jealous of their territory,” Laurence said. “They are not very pretty, but there is no malice in them; though what use twenty dragons can be, to cover all England—” He stopped. “Lenton, surely something can be done—must be done,” he said.

  Lenton only shook his head briefly. “The usual remedies did some good, at the beginning,” he said. “Quieted the coughing, and so forth. They could still fly, if they did not have much appetite; and colds are usually such trifling things with them. But it lingered on so long, and after a while the possets seemed to lose their effect—some began to grow worse—”

  He stopped, and after a long moment added, with an effort, “Obversaria is dead.”

  “Good God!” Laurence cried. “Sir, I am shocked to hear it—so deeply grieved.” It was a dreadful loss: she had been flying with Lenton some forty years, the flag-dragon at Dover for the last ten, and though relatively young had produced four eggs already; perhaps the finest flyer in all England, with few to even compete with her for the title.

  “That was in, let me see; August,” Lenton said, as if he had not heard. “After Inlacrimas, but before Minacitus. It takes some of them worse than others. The very young hold up best, and the old ones linger; it is the ones between who have been dying. Dying first, anyway; I suppose they will all go in the end.”

  Chapter 2

  CAPTAIN,” KEYNES SAID, “I am sorry; any gormless imbecile can bandage up a bullet-wound, and a gormless imbecile you are very likely to be assigned in my place. But I cannot stay with the healthiest dragon in Britain when the quarantine-coverts are full of the sick.”

  “I perfectly understand, Mr. Keynes, and you need say nothing more,” Laurence said. “Will you not fly with us as far as Dover?”

  “No; Victoriatus will not last the week, and I will wait and attend the dissection with Dr. Harrow,” Keynes said, with a brutal sort of practicality that made Laurence flinch. “I have hopes we may learn something of the characteristics of the disease. Some of the couriers are still flying; one will carry me onwards.”

  “Well,” Laurence said, and shook the surgeon’s hand. “I hope we shall see you with us again soon.”

  “I hope you will not,” Keynes said, in his usual acerbic manner. “If you do, I will otherwise be lacking for patients, which from the course of this disease will mean they are all dead.”

  Laurence could hardly say his spirits were lowered; they had already been reduced so far as to make little difference out of the loss. But he was sorry. Dragon-surgeons were not by and large near so incompetent as the naval breed, and despite Keynes’s words Laurence did not fear his eventual successor, but to lose a good man, his courage and sense proven and his eccentricities known, was never pleasant; and Temeraire would not like it.

  “He is not hurt?” Temeraire pressed. “He is not sick?”

  “No, Temeraire; but he is needed elsewhere,” Laurence said. “He is a senior surgeon; I am sure you would not deny his attentions to those of your comrades who are suffering from this illness.”

  “Well, if Maximus or Lily should need him,” Temeraire said crabbily, and drew furrows in the ground. “Shall I see them again soon? I am sure they cannot be so very ill. Maximus is the biggest dragon I have ever seen, even though we have been to China; he is sure to recover quickly.”

  “No, my dear,” Laurence said uneasily, and broke the worst of the news—“The sick have none of them recovered, and you must take the very greatest care not to go anywhere near the quarantine-grounds.”

  “But I do not understand,” Temeraire said. “If they do not recover, then—” He paused.

  Laurence only looked away. Temeraire had good excuse for not understanding at once. Dragons were hardy creatures, and many breeds might live a century and more; he might have justly expected to know Maximus and Lily for longer than a man’s lifetime, if the war had not taken them from him.

  At last, sounding almost bewildered, Temeraire said, “But I have so much to tell them—I came for them. So they might learn that dragons may read and write, and have property, and do things other than fight.”

  “I will write a letter for you, which we can send to them with your greetings, and they will be happier to know you well and safe from contagion than for your company,” Laurence said. Temeraire did not answer; he was very still, and his head bowed deeply to his chest. “We will be near-by,” Laurence went on, after a moment, “and you may write to them every day, if you wish; when we have finished our work.”

  “Patrolling, I suppose,” Temeraire said, with a very unusual note of bitterness, “and more stupid formation-work; while they are all sick, and we can do nothing.”

  Laurence looked down, into his lap, where their new orders lay amid the oilcloth packet of all his papers, and had no comfort to offer: brusque instructions for their immediate removal to Dover, where Temeraire’s expectations were likely to be answered in every particular.

  He was not encouraged, on reporting to the headquarters at Dover directly they had landed, by being left to cool his heels in the hall outside the new admiral’s office for thirty minutes, listening to voices by no means indistinct despite the heavy oaken door. He recognized Jane Roland, shouting; the voices that answered her were unfamiliar; and Laurence rose to his feet abruptly, straightening as the door
was flung open. A tall man in a naval coat came rushing out with clothing and expression both disordered, his lower cheeks mottled to a moderate glow under his sideburns; he did not pause, but threw Laurence a furious glare before he left.

  “Come in, Laurence; come in,” Jane called, and he went in; she was standing with the admiral, an older man dressed rather astonishingly in a black frock coat and knee-breeches with buckled shoes.

  “You have not met Dr. Wapping, I think,” Jane said. “Sir, this is Captain Laurence, of Temeraire.”

  “Sir,” Laurence said, and made his leg deep to cover his confusion and dismay. He supposed that if all the dragons were in quarantine, to put the covert in the charge of a physician was the sort of thing which might make sense to landsmen, as with the notion advanced to him once, by a family friend seeking his influence on behalf of a less-fortunate relation, to advance a surgeon—not even a naval surgeon—to the command of a hospital ship.

  “Captain, I am honored to make your acquaintance,” Dr. Wapping said. “Admiral, I will take my leave; I beg your pardon for having been the cause of so unpleasant a scene.”

  “Nonsense; those rascals at the Victualing Board are a pack of unhanged scoundrels, and I am happy to put them in their place; good day to you. Would you credit, Laurence,” Jane said, as Wapping closed the door behind himself, “that those wretches are not content that the poor creatures eat scarcely enough to feed a bird anymore, but they must send us diseased stock and scrawny?

  “But this is a way to welcome you home.” She caught him by the shoulders and kissed him soundly on both cheeks. “You are a damned sight; whatever has happened to your coat? Will you have a glass of wine?” She poured for them both without waiting his answer; he took it in a sort of appalled blankness. “I have all your letters, so I have a tolerable notion what you have been doing, and you must forgive me my silence, Laurence; I found it easier to write nothing than to leave out the only matter of any importance.”

  “No; that is, yes, of course,” he said, and sat down with her at the fire. Her coat was thrown over the arm of her chair; now that he looked, he saw the admiral’s fourth bar on the shoulders, and the front more magnificently frogged with braid. Her face, too, was altered but not for the better; she had lost a stone of weight at least, he thought, and her dark hair, cropped short, was shot with grey.

  “Well, I am sorry to be such a ruin,” she said ruefully, and laughed away his apologies. “No, we are all of us decaying, Laurence; there is no denying it. You have seen poor Lenton, I suppose. He held up like a hero for three weeks after she died, but then we found him on the floor of his bedroom in an apoplexy; for a week he could not speak without slurring. He came along a good ways afterwards, but still he has been a shade of himself.”

  “I am sorry for it,” Laurence said, “though I drink to your promotion,” and by herculean effort he managed it without a stutter.

  “I thank you, dear fellow,” she said. “I would be et up with pride, I suppose, if matters were otherwise, and if it were not one annoyance after another. We glide along tolerably well when left to our own devices, but I must deal with these idiotish creatures from the admiralty. They are told, before they come, and told again, and still they will simper at me, and coo, as if I had not been a-dragonback before they were out of dresses, and then they stare if I dress them down for behaving like kiss-my-hand squires.”

  “I suppose they find it a difficult adjustment,” Laurence said, with private sympathy. “I wonder the Admiralty should have—” and belatedly he paused, feeling he was treading on obscure and dangerous ground. One could not very well quarrel with pursuing whatever means necessary to reconcile Longwings, perhaps Britain’s most deadly breed, to service, and as the beasts would accept none but female handlers, some must be offered them; Laurence was sorry for the necessity that would thrust a gently born woman out of her rightful society and into harm’s way, but at least they were raised up to it. And where necessary, they had perforce to act as formation-leaders, transmitting the maneuvers to their wings; but this was a far cry from flag rank, not to say commanding the largest covert in Britain, and perhaps the most critical.

  “They certainly did not like to give it to me, but they had precious little choice,” Jane said. “Portland would not come from Gibraltar; Laetificat is not up to the sea-voyage anymore. So it was me or Sanderson, and he is making a cake of himself over the business; goes off into corners and weeps like a woman, as though that would help anything: a veteran of nine fleet actions, if you would credit it.” Then she ran her hand through her disordered crop and sighed. “Never mind, you are not to listen to me, Laurence; I am impatient, and his Animosia does poorly.”

  “And Excidium?” Laurence ventured.

  “Excidium is a tough old bird, and he knows how to husband his strength: has the sense to eat, even though he has no appetite. He will muddle along a good while yet, and you know, he has close on a century of service; many his age have already shot themselves of the whole business and retired to the breeding grounds.” She smiled; it was not whole-hearted. “There; I have been brave. Let us to pleasanter things: you have brought me twenty dragons, and by God do I have a use for them. Let us go and see them.”

  “She is a handful and a half,” Granby admitted lowly, as they considered the coiled serpentine length of Iskierka’s body, faint threads of steam issuing from the many needle-like spikes upon her body, “and I haven’t ridden herd on her, sir, I am sorry.”

  Iskierka had already established herself to her own satisfaction, if no one else’s, by clawing out a deep pit in the clearing next to Temeraire’s where she had been housed, then filling it with ash: this acquired from some two dozen young trees which she had unceremoniously uprooted and burnt up inside her pit. She had then added to the powdery grey mixture a collection of boulders, which she fired to a moderate glow before going to sleep, comfortably, in her heated nest. The bonfire and its lingering smolder were visible for some distance, even to the farmhouses nearest the covert, and a few hours past her arrival had already produced several complaints and a great deal of alarm.

  “Oh, you have done enough keeping her harnessed out in the countryside, without a head of cattle to your name,” Jane said, giving the drowsing Iskierka’s side a pat. “They may bleat to me all they like, for a fire-breather, and you may be sure the Navy will cheer your name when they hear we have our own at last. Well done; well done indeed, and I am happy to confirm you in your rank, Captain Granby. Should you like to do the honors, Laurence?”

  Most of Laurence’s crew had already been employed in Iskierka’s clearing, in beating out the stray embers which flew out of her pit and threatened to ignite all the covert if left unchecked. Ash-dusty and tired as they all were, they had none of them gone away, lingering consciously without the need of any announcement, and now lined up on a muttered word from young Lieutenant Ferris to watch Laurence pin the second pair of gold bars upon Granby’s shoulders.

  “Gentlemen,” Jane said, when Laurence had done, and they gave a cheek-flushed Granby three huzzahs, whole-hearted if a little subdued, and Ferris and Riggs stepped over to shake him by the hand.

  “We will see about assigning you a crew, though it is early days yet with her,” Jane said, after the ceremony had dispersed, and they proceeded on to make her acquainted with the ferals. “I have no shortage of men now, more’s the pity. Feed her twice daily, see if we cannot make up for any growth she may have been shorted, and whenever she is awake I will start you on Longwing maneuvers. I don’t know if she can scorch herself, as they can with their own acid, but we needn’t find out by trial.”

  Granby nodded; he seemed not the least nonplussed at answering to her. Neither did Tharkay, who had been persuaded to stay on at least a little longer, as one of the few of them with any influence upon the ferals at all. He rather looked mostly amused, in his secretive way, once past the inquiring glance which he had first cast at Laurence: as Jane had insisted upon being taken to the newcome
dragons at once, there had been no chance for Laurence to give Tharkay a private caution in advance of their meeting. He did not reveal any surprise, however, but only made her a polite bow, and performed the introductions quite calmly.

  Arkady and his band had made very little less confusion of their own clearings than Iskierka, preferring to knock down all the trees between and cluster together in a great heap. The chill of the December air did not trouble them, used as they were to the vastly colder regions of the Pamirs, but they spoke disapprovingly of the dampness, and on understanding that here before them was the senior officer of the covert, at once demanded from her an accounting of the promised cows, one apiece daily, by which they had been lured into service.

  “They make the position that if they do not happen to eat the cows upon a given day, still they are owed the cattle, which they may call in at a future time,” Tharkay explained, provoking Jane’s deep laugh.

  “Tell them they shall have as much as they like to eat on any occasion, and if they are too suspicious for that to satisfy them, we shall make them a tally: they may each of them take one of these logs they have knocked about over to the feeding pens, and mark it when they take a cow,” Jane said, more merry than offended at being met with such negotiations. “Pray ask will they agree to a rate of exchange, two hogs for a cow, or two sheep, should we bring in some variety?”

  The ferals put their heads together and muttered and hissed and whistled amongst themselves, in a cacophony made private only by the obscurity of their language, and finally Arkady turned back and professed himself willing to settle on the trade agreement, except that he insisted goats should be three to a cow, they having some contempt for that animal, more easily obtained in their former homeland and likely there to be scrawny.

  Jane bowed to him to seal the arrangement, and he bobbed his head back, his expression deeply satisfied, and rendered all the more piratical by the red splash of mongrel color which covered one of his eyes and spilled down his neck. “They are a gang of ruffians and make no mistake,” Jane said, as she led them back towards her offices, “but I have no doubt of their flying, at any rate: with that sort of wiry muscle they will go in circles around anything in their weight-class, or over it, and I am happy to stuff their bellies for them.”