Crucible of Gold

by Naomi Novik

Page 36

 

  “You must know you are being used, by Napoleon,” Laurence said, “to an end which would see more and not less of the world reduced to a subjugated state; indeed he has reinstated slavery, rather than forbidden it, in the territories of France. Can you have found so many survivors of your own particular tribe, with this assault, as to justify the toll in life among the innocent?”

  “There has been no slaughter,” she said. “We did not burn the city: the Portuguese did that themselves, in their panic, while we stayed upon the mountains and made our demands for the return of the stolen. We took the city only after they had fled it. As for the survivors, you may come and see for yourself. ”

  With a word to Kefentse, she guided Laurence and Granby and Hammond down to the encampment and through its cramped and narrow lanes, which housed to his surprise many thousands: men, women, children, dazed with both destruction and liberation. “Some are the descendants of those stolen,” she said, “and do not remember their home in Africa. ”

  “And others,” Granby said to Laurence in an undertone, “haven’t anything to do with the Tswana at all, I imagine: those dragons don’t seem likely to me to be so very particular about who they have found, so long as they have found someone. ” He started guiltily, seeing Lethabo’s eye upon him overhearing.

  “But he cannot be wrong,” Laurence said to her, when they had gone back into the dockside house which, being one of the remaining standing buildings, served presently as her headquarters. Supplies of foodstuffs and clothing salvaged from the wreckage filled the rooms, and they sat among barrels of salt beef. “I can scarcely believe that so many would have been taken before provoking that answer, which your dragon country-men have made, of smashing the slave ports; and you yourself have told me that not one in ten could have survived this far. The greater share of those you have rescued cannot be of the Tswana. ”

  “If it were so,” Lethabo said, “and yet they claimed ancestry or some distant memory, would that be less true than the rebirth of our ancestors as the dragons who guard us?”

  He did not know how to answer her: she had been the wife of a missionary and, he thought, too good a Christian to believe in that superstition; she saw his confusion and shook her head. “I do not call that a lie,” she said, “which when believed is true; and I think God loves justice better than the letter of the law. You will forgive me a moment. ”

  She rose, for another four survivors had that moment come rushing into the house: a man and a woman with a child in arms and an older one clinging to her hand. They looked with fear over their shoulders at the middle-weight dragon who had deposited them before the door; in contrast the beast stood outside hunched down and peering in after them, with a hopeful air.

  Lethabo spoke to them in Portuguese; Laurence could not follow the conversation, but saw them grow gradually calmer, and then uncertain, looking back at the dragon with doubt writ on their faces. At last Lethabo went to the table before the windows and opened a great ledger in which names were written in two columns: she paged through it and found the name Boitumelo solitary on the left, and read it aloud to them.

  The man repeated it slowly, and looked a question at the woman; she looked at the children, and in a moment repeated the name also. Lethabo nodded, and wrote in the right-hand column; then took them outside to the waiting dragon, and spoke with the creature in the language of the Tswana. Laurence went to stand by the doorway, and heard her tell the dragon that the man was likely the grandson of Boitumelo, and this his family. The dragon bugled joy and answered that he had thought so: there was a decided likeness, in the little boy; and he put his nose down to the older child, who after a moment tentatively reached out and gave it a pat.

  In a little more than a quarter-of-an-hour, Lethabo came back inside: the new arrivals had been seen off to shelter in the settlement by one of the women assisting her. She raised an eyebrow at Laurence, who stood looking over the ledger. “Do you have any other quarrel with my work?”

  “No,” Laurence said quietly, as she shut the book again, “none; save to wonder how you will take so many home. ”

  “The French have promised to sail us back,” she said, “and then return for more: we were brought from Africa in smaller ships; on these great transports near one thousand can sail, and in better comfort, with the peace of knowing they go to freedom and not to slavery. ” She nodded at his look. “And on their return the ships will bring back still more dragons, yes. Of course they are using us: and we them; this is no true alliance, and our King knows better than to trust Napoleon, but we have had not much opportunity to choose our allies in this cause. ”

  “Would you prefer others?” Laurence asked outright, ignoring Granby’s startled look, and Hammond’s barely restrained flinch of protest.

  “Perhaps, Captain,” Lethabo said, “and I think we must have others, if we are all not soon to witness the very slaughter of which you first accused us. ”

  “Captain,” Hammond said at once, as they left the headquarters and began the walk back to the city’s edge, where Temeraire waited to carry them up to their encampment on the hill, “of course our engaging in a direct action on behalf of the colony is presently somewhat impractical—”

  Laurence exchanged a look with Granby, whose face showed what he thought of this as a description of a confrontation between three dragons and near two dozen.

  “—but I feel I must remind you that the Portuguese are our allies, and invaluably so—even this very moment British soldiers may be landing on their soil—and I cannot countenance any arrangement which should damage our relations with that nation. ”

  “I hope to do no such thing,” Laurence said.

  “Sir, you will forgive me,” Hammond said, “but as a point of law, these men and women you see thronging these alleys are escaped slaves—the legal property of landowners subject to the Portuguese Crown: in the—the tacit encouragement, the, I must say, near endorsement—sir, you did not at any moment take pains to establish the rights of the—of the owners—”

  Laurence stopped in the lane and took Hammond by the arm and turned him forcibly to look: children played in the street building toy forts from shattered bricks, women sat together with their washing; a scene which might have belonged to any village, despite the framing ruins. “Mr. Hammond,” Laurence said, “if you came here with the purpose to render thousands of human souls into bondage, for the mere worldly profit either of landowners or of nations, then you brought the wrong man to assist you; and I think, sir, you well knew as much, when you solicited that I should come. ”

  “Oh—” Hammond tried to draw away, uncomfortable and without much success. “Captain, I speak here of sovereignty—the necessity of balancing—I must assert that we will not secure the liberty of these men and women, if you begin by giving offense to the Portuguese Crown: in breaching the subject of negotiations with the Tswana first, without reference of any sort to the wishes of the prince regent, you have usurped his authority—”

  “If you can envision a solution to the present difficulties faced here by the Crown which does not entail coming to terms with the Tswana,” Laurence said, “then I beg you to enlighten me; and likewise if you imagine any circumstances where the Tswana should agree to affirm the rights of slave-owners. But otherwise, you have heard Lethabo’s account of the circumstances, and unless you doubt her veracity on no grounds whatsoever, in my opinion there is not a moment to lose. ”

  Lethabo had explained that in the wake of the burning of Rio, their demands having gone unanswered, the Tswana dragons had swarmed out over the nearby countryside and among the nearest estates, snatching up slaves and carrying them back to the city. Rumor had soon outrun their work, and many more slaves as well had begun to flee their masters, and to make their way to the city in hopes of liberation.

  There had been no direct battle offered, no extensive engagement: the Tswana were too anxious to avoid any injury coming to the slaves, and the few conf
rontations with local militia had quickly been resolved in their favor, their having early on seized or ruined nearly all the available artillery. At first the Tswana had carried on their rescue with impunity, but some of the colonists, fearing both the loss of their property and the direct attacks which had not yet come, had hit upon a dreadful solution to forestall them. The slave-owners had made some number of their slaves hostage and penned them into barns or small buildings on their property, which they now threatened to set alight if ever the dragons approached.

  This tactic had, in the near term, established a stalemate: the Tswana had confined themselves to snatching only slaves they saw in the open. But their anxiety to protect their kindred warred with their impatience, and the stalemate would not survive for long.

  “Yes,” Temeraire confirmed, as they flew back to the camp. “I have been speaking to Kefentse, and he is firmly of the opinion that they must attack regardless. They have been quite at a standstill for two months now, and the hunting is getting thin if they avoid the estates where slaves are held. They do not all agree with him, of course. Dikeledi—she is that middling pinkish dragon with the horns, whom you have seen, flying—Dikeledi has not yet found any survivors of her own tribe, and so she refuses to countenance the risk. ”

  She was less willing to be deceived than many of her fellow-dragons; having lost her village only a few years before, one of the last struck, she insisted on recognizing the survivors in their persons, rather than accepting others as their descendants to renew her lineage. She was not one of the larger beasts, but had nevertheless enormous consequence among the Tswana for her skill and maneuverability in the air, and, Laurence gathered, was held to be the reincarnation of a priestess of great renown.

  But Temeraire reported the general opinion had begun to turn against her: the other beasts were grown angry and brooding over the hostage slaves, whose treatment they feared; particularly after the attempt at starving out one of the plantation owners had ended in horrified failure when he began to starve his slaves in turn.

  “A bloodbath on all sides is certain to ensue,” Laurence said, “if we cannot forestall it; therefore, Mr. Hammond, you will oblige me with rather less concern for the injured sentiments of our allies, and more for the swift advancement of a truce which should preserve their very lives. ”

  The Portuguese government had retreated to a fortification in the city of Paraty, near the limits of the day’s flying range of a dragon. Temeraire flew in under a somewhat ragged British flag which had been dug out from the rubble of the city and provided by Lethabo, despite which their approach met shouts and ringing bells of alarm and assembling troops. Temeraire pulled up and hovered out of range of the guns, while Gerry vigorously hung out the colors and made the handful of appropriate Portuguese signals which had been cobbled out of the collective memory of the aviators, none of whom had ever served very long as signal-ensign.

  These were received doubtfully below, plainly occasioning a great deal of discussion, until reply came some quarter-of-an-hour later, and they were bidden to land in the face of a bristling defense: all the guns which the Portuguese yet held, and their crews sweating at the touch holes with the match smoldering.

  “You will go aloft again when you have let us off, Temeraire, if you please,” Laurence said, with an eye on those nervous hands. “We can have no reliance on the judgment of those men: keep out of range until they have recognized our party. ”

  “Well, I will: but only just out of range,” Temeraire said uneasily, “and if there is any difficulty, I am certain if I should come at them from the flank, and roar at the proper angle, I could roll up all those guns at once. ”

  Laurence shook his head, privately: he had not yet thought over all the consequence of the amplification of the divine wind, which Temeraire had achieved on Lien’s example. Though she had formerly disdained direct action in battle according to the Chinese tradition, her reluctance had not survived the immediacy of threat to Napoleon’s person; and Laurence had no doubt that Napoleon would bend his every wile towards persuading her to unleash so astonishing a weapon in his service in future. That it might be put to use so devastatingly on land, and not merely at sea, made her even more dreadful a danger.

  But now he slid from Temeraire’s back into the courtyard, and helped Hammond to climb down before Temeraire lifted away; he turned to meet the dubious eyes of a sweating Portuguese officer in the uniform of an infantry captain, who brightened as he saw Laurence’s green coat and gold bars. He nodded with enthusiasm, and said in broken French, “Ah, you join us! We are overjoyed, pardon—” and turning waved back the guns, and the soldiers fell with expressions of relief out of their ragged square.

  Messengers went running into the main building of the fort, which showed recent signs of repair: fresh masonry and paint unmarked by weather. They were kept standing, and Laurence used the time to study the walls: not much use, he thought, against the Tswana; not up to standing against even a middle-weight.

  At last Hammond elbowed him and bowed, as from the fortification issued a party of men, with one corpulent man uniformed and beribboned in the front, and Hammond greeted him in his native tongue and then continued in French to say, “And I beg Your Royal Highness will forgive our delay in arriving, occasioned as it has been by difficulties beyond our control; and permit me to introduce to you Captain William Laurence of His Majesty’s Aerial Corps,” before he whispered urgently and unnecessarily to Laurence, “Pray make your bows, sir: this is the prince regent of Portugal. ”

  “We will certainly take back Rio, very shortly,” Prince João said, “when our forces are well-gathered: from Mexico we have already a dozen beasts, whom even now you can see at maneuvers—”