Black Powder War t-3

by Naomi Novik

  But they were at least not unpleasant guard-dogs, and proved informative. “Yes; some of them have been telling me about the harbor works, they are here in the city helping,” Temeraire said, when the operations Laurence had seen were described to him; and the visiting dragons willingly confirmed a good deal of what Laurence had surmised: they were fortifying the harbor, with a great many cannon. “It sounds very interesting; I would like to go and see, if we might.”

  “I would dearly like a closer look myself,” Granby said. “I have no idea how they are managing it with horses involved. It is the very devil of a time having cattle around dragons; we count ourselves lucky not to stampede them, much less to get any useful work out of them. It is not enough to keep them out of sight; a horse can smell a dragon more than a mile off.”

  “I doubt Mustafa will be inclined to let us inspect their works very closely,” Laurence said. “To let us have a glimpse across the harbor to impress upon us the futility of attack is one thing; to show all his hand would be something else. Has there been any word from him, any further explanation?”

  “Not a peep, and neither hide nor hair of Tharkay, either, since you left,” Granby said.

  Laurence nodded, and sat down heavily upon the stairs. “We cannot keep going through all these ministers and official channels,” he said finally. “Time is too short. We must demand an audience with the Sultan; his intercession must be the surest way to gain their quick cooperation.”

  “But if he has let them put us off, this far—”

  “I cannot credit an intention on his part to wreck all relations,” Laurence said, “not with Bonaparte nearer his doorstep than ever, since Austerlitz; and if he would be as pleased to keep the eggs, that is not as much to say he would choose them over an open and final breach. But so long as his ministers serve as intercessionaries, he has not committed himself and his state: he can always blame it upon them; if indeed it is not some sort of private political tangle behind these delays to begin with.”

  Chapter 7

  LAURENCE OCCUPIED HIS evening with writing a fresh letter, this one still more impassioned and addressed directly to the Grand Vezir. He was only able to dispatch it by the cost of two pieces of silver instead of one: the boy servant had grown conscious of the strength of his position, and kept his hand outstretched firmly when Laurence put the first piece into his palm, staring silent but expectantly until Laurence at last set another down; an impudence Laurence was powerless to answer otherwise.

  The letter brought no answer that night; but in the morning, at first he thought he had at last won some reply, for a tall and impressive man came walking briskly and with energy into their courtyard shortly past first light, trailed by several of the black eunuch guards. He created something of a noise, and then came out to the gardens where Laurence was sitting with Temeraire and laboring over yet another letter.

  The newcomer was plainly a military officer of some rank; an aviator, by his long sweeping coat of leather gorgeously embroidered around the borders, and by the short-trimmed hair that set the Turkish aviators apart from their turbaned fellows; and a gifted one, by the sparkling jeweled chelengk upon his chest, a singular mark of honor among the Turks, rarely bestowed, which Laurence recognized from its having been granted Lord Nelson after the victory of the Nile.

  The officer mentioned Bezaid’s name, which made Laurence suspect him the Kazilik male’s captain, but his French was not good, and at first Laurence thought he was speaking over-loud to try and make himself understood. He went on at length, his words tumbling together, and turned to address the watching dragons noisily also.

  “But I have not said anything that is not the truth,” Temeraire said, indignantly, and Laurence, still puzzling out the words he had managed to pick out of the flood, realized the officer was deeply, furiously agitated, and his spitting words rather a sign of high temper than inarticulate speech.

  The officer actually shook his fist in Temeraire’s teeth and said to Laurence violently, in French, “He tells more lies, and—” Here he dragged his hand across his throat, a gesture requiring no translation. Having finished this incoherent speech, he turned and stormed out of the garden; and in his wake a handful of the dragons sheepishly leapt into the air and flew away: plainly they were not under any orders to guard Temeraire at all.

  “Temeraire,” Laurence said, in the following silence, “what have you been saying to them?”

  “I have only been telling them about property,” Temeraire said, “and how they ought to be paid, and not need to go to war unless they wish it, but might do more work such as they are doing upon the harbor, or some other sort of labor, which might be more interesting, and then they could earn money for jewels and food, and go about the city as they liked—”

  “Oh, good God,” Laurence said, with a groan; he could imagine very well how these communications would have been viewed by a Turkish officer whose dragon expressed a desire not to go into battle and to take up some other profession which Temeraire might have suggested from his experience in China, such as poetry or nursemaiding. “Pray send the rest of them away, at once; or I dare say every officer of the Turkish corps in reach will come and rail at us in turn.”

  “I do not care if they do,” Temeraire said obstinately. “If he had stayed, I should have had a great deal to say to him. If he cared for his dragon, he would want him treated well, and to have liberty.”

  “You cannot be proselytizing now,” Laurence said. “Temeraire, we are guests here, and very nearly supplicants; they can deny us the eggs and make all our work to come here quite useless, and surely you see that they are putting obstacles enough in our path, without we give them any further cause to be difficult. We must rather conciliate the good-will of our hosts than offend them.”

  “Why ought we conciliate the men at the dragons’ expense?” Temeraire said. “The eggs are theirs, after all, and indeed, I do not see why we are not negotiating with them, rather.”

  “They do not tend their own eggs, or manage their hatching; you know they have left the eggs to their captains, and given over their handling,” Laurence said. “Else I should be delighted to address them; they could scarcely be less reasonable than our hosts,” he added with some frustration. “But as matters stand, we are at the mercy of the Turks, and not their dragons.”

  Temeraire was silent, though his tail twitching rapidly betrayed his agitation. “But they have never had the opportunity to understand their own condition, nor that there might be a better; they are as ignorant as I myself was, before I saw China, and if they do not learn that much, how would anything ever change?”

  “You will accomplish no change solely by making them discontented and offending their captains,” Laurence said. “But in any case, our duty to home and to the war effort must come first. A Kazilik alone, on our side of the Channel, may mean the difference between invasion and security, and tip the balance of war; we can hardly weigh any concerns against such a potential advantage.”

  “But—” He stopped, and scratched at his forehead with the side of his claw. “But how will matters at all be different, once we are at home? If men will be upset at giving dragons liberty, would this not interfere with the war in England, too, and not only by keeping us from the eggs here? Or, if some British dragons did not want to fight anymore, that would hurt the war also.”

  He peered down with open curiosity at Laurence, waiting an answer; an answer which Laurence could not give, for indeed he felt precisely so, and he could not lie and say otherwise, not in the face of a direct question. He could think of nothing to say which would satisfy Temeraire, and as his silence stretched, Temeraire’s ruff slowly drooped down, flattening against his neck, and his tendrils hung limply.

  “You do not want me to say these things when we are at home, either,” Temeraire said quietly. “Have you only been humoring me? You think it is all foolishness, and we ought not make any demands.”

  “No, Temeraire,” Laurence said, very low. “
Not foolishness at all, you have all the right in the world to liberty; but selfish—yes; I must call it so.”

  Temeraire flinched, and drew his head back a little, bewildered; Laurence looked down at his own tight-wrung hands; there could be no softening of it now, and he must pay for his long delay of the inevitable, at an usurious rate of interest.

  “We are at war,” he said, “and our case is a desperate one. Against us is ranged a general who has never been defeated, at the head of a country with twice over and more the native resources of our own small British Isles. You know Bonaparte has once massed an invasion force; he can do it again, if only he should subdue the Continent to his satisfaction, and perhaps with more success in a second attempt. In such circumstances, to begin a campaign for private benefit, which should have material risks of injuring the war effort, in my opinion can bear no other name; duty requires we put the concerns of the nation above our own.”

  “But,” Temeraire protested, in a voice as small as could be produced from his deep chest, “but it is not for my own benefit, but for that of all the dragons, that I wish to press for change.”

  “If the war be lost, what will anything else matter, or whatever progress you have made at the expense of such a loss?” Laurence said. “Bonaparte will tyrannize over all Europe, and no one will have any liberty at all, men or dragons.”

  Temeraire made no answer; his head drooped over his forelegs, curling in on himself.

  “I beg you, my dear, only to have patience,” Laurence said after a long and painful moment of silence, aching to see him so downcast; and wishing he might in honesty recall his own words. “I do promise you, we will make a beginning; once we are home in England, we will find friends who will listen to us, and I hope I may have some small influence to call upon also. There are many real advances,” he added, a little desperately, “practical improvements, which can be made without any unhappy effect upon the progress of the war; and with these examples to open the way, I am confident you will soon find a happier reception for your more lavish ideas, a better success at the cost only of time.”

  “But the war must come first,” Temeraire said, low.

  “Yes,” Laurence said, “—forgive me; I would not for the world give you pain.”

  Temeraire shook his head a little, and leaned over to nuzzle him briefly. “I know, Laurence,” he said, and rose up to go and speak to the other dragons, who were still gathered behind them in the garden, watching; and when he had seen them all flit away again, he padded away with head bowed low to curl himself brooding in the shade of the cypress-trees. Laurence went inside and sat watching him through the window-lattice, wondering wretchedly if Temeraire would have been happier, after all, to stay the rest of his days in China.

  “You could tell him—” Granby said, but he stopped and shook his head. “No, it won’t do,” he agreed. “I am damned sorry, Laurence, but I can’t see how you can sweeten it. You would not credit the stupid display in Parliament anytime we ask for funds only to keep up a covert or two, or get some better provisions for them; even if we only start building them pavilions, we will have a second war at home on our hands, and that is the least of his notions.”

  Laurence looked at him. “Will it hurt your chances?” he asked, quietly; these could not be very good in any case, with more than a year so far from home, out from under the eye of the senior officers who decided which lieutenants should be allowed a chance to put a hatchling into harness, not with ten eager men or more to every egg.

  “I hope I am not so selfish a dog as to cavil for a reason such as that,” Granby said with spirit. “I never knew a fellow to get an egg who was forever worrying about it; pray don’t consider it. Damned few fellows who come into the Corps fresh, like me, ever get their step; there are too many dragons who go by inheritance, and the admirals like to have fellows from Corps families. But if I ever have a boy, now I am far enough along I can give him a leg up, or one of my nephews; that is good enough for me, and serving with a prime goer like Temeraire.”

  But he could not quite keep a wistful note from his voice; of course he would want his own dragon, and Laurence was certain that service as first lieutenant aboard a heavy-weight like Temeraire would ordinarily have meant a very good opportunity. Consideration for Granby was not an argument which could be made to Temeraire himself, of course, being a wholly unfair sort of pressure. On Laurence, however, it weighed heavily; he had been himself the beneficiary of a great deal of influence in his naval service, much of it even earned by merit, and he considered it a point of honor to do properly by his own officers.

  He went outside. Temeraire had retreated further within the gardens; when Laurence at last came on him, Temeraire was still sitting curled quietly, his distress betrayed only by the furrows which he had gouged deep in the ground before him. His head was lowered upon his forelegs, and his eyes distant and narrow-slitted; the ruff nearly flat against his neck, sorrowful.

  Laurence had no very clear notion of what to say, only wishing desperately to see him less unhappy, and almost willing to lie again if it would not hurt him the more. He stepped closer, and Temeraire lifted his head and looked at him; they neither of them spoke, but he went to Temeraire’s side and put his hand on him, and Temeraire made a place in the crook of his foreleg for Laurence to sit.

  A dozen nightingales were singing, pent in some nearby aviary; no other sound disturbed them a long while, and then Emily came running through the garden and calling, “Sir, sir,” until panting she reached them and said, “Sir, pray come, they want to take Dunne and Hackley and hang them.”

  Laurence stared, leapt down from Temeraire’s arm, and dashed back up the stairs to the court, Temeraire sitting up and putting his head anxiously over the terrace railing: nearly all the crew were out in the arched cloister, figuring in a wild noisy struggle with their own door guards and several other palace eunuchs: men of far greater position, judging by their golden-hilted scimitars and rich garb, and of more powerful mien, bull-necked and plainly not mutes, with furious imprecations flying from their lips as they wrestled slighter aviators to the ground.

  Dunne and Hackley were in the thick of it; the two young riflemen were panting and fighting against the grip of the heavy-set men who clutched at them. “What the devil do you all mean by this?” Laurence bellowed, and let his voice carry over their heads; Temeraire added emphasis with his own rumbling growl, and the struggle subsided: the aviators fell back, and the guards stared up at Temeraire with expressions to suggest they would have gone pale if they could. They did not loose their captives, but at least did not attempt at once to drag them away.

  “Now then,” Laurence said grimly, “what goes toward here; Mr. Dunne?” He and Hackley hung their heads and said nothing, an answer in itself; plainly they had engaged in some sort of skylarking, and disturbed the guards.

  “Go and fetch Hasan Mustafa Pasha,” Laurence said to one of their own guards, a fellow he recognized, and repeated the name a few times over, the man glancing reluctantly at the others; abruptly one of the stranger eunuchs, a tall and imposing man in a high turban, snow-white against his dark skin and adorned by a sizable ruby set in gold, spoke commandingly to the guard; at this the mute at last nodded and set off down the stairs, hurrying away towards the rest of the palace grounds.

  Laurence turned around. “You will answer me, Mr. Dunne, at once.”

  “Sir, we didn’t mean any harm,” Dunne said, “we only thought, we thought—” He looked at Hackley, but the other rifleman was dumb and staring, pale under his freckled skin, no help. “We only went up over the roof, sir, and then we thought we might have a look round at the rest of the place, and—and then those fellows started chasing us, and we got over the wall again and ran back here, and tried to get back inside.”

  “I see,” Laurence said, coldly, “and you thought you would do this without application to myself or Mr. Granby, as to the wisdom of this course of action.”

  Dunne swallowed and let his head
fall again. There was an uneasy, uncomfortable silence, a long wait; but not so very long, before Mustafa came around the corner at a rapid clip, the guard leading him, and his face red and mottled with haste and anger. “Sir,” Laurence said, forestalling him, “My men without permission left their posts; I regret that they should have caused a disturbance—”

  “You must hand them over,” Mustafa said. “They shall at once be put to death: they attempted to enter the seraglio.”

  Laurence said nothing a moment, while Dunne and Hackley hunched themselves still lower and darted their eyes at his face anxiously. “Did they trespass upon the privacy of the women?”

  “Sir, we never—” Dunne began.

  “Be silent,” Laurence said savagely.

  Mustafa spoke to the guards; the chief eunuch beckoned forward one of his men, who answered in a voluble flow. “They looked in upon them, and made to them beckoning gestures through the window,” Mustafa said, turning back. “More than sufficient insult: it is forbidden that any man but the Sultan should look upon the women of the harem and have intercourse with them; only the eunuchs, otherwise, may speak with them.”

  Temeraire, listening to this, snorted forcefully enough to blow the fountain-spray into their faces. “That is very silly,” he said hotly. “I am not having any of my crew put to death, and anyway I do not see why anyone should be put to death for talking to someone else at all; it is not as though that could hurt anyone.”

  Mustafa did not try to answer him, but instead turned a narrow measured look on Laurence. “I trust you do not mean to thus defy the Sultan’s law, Captain, and give offense; you have, I think, had something to say on the subject of courtesy between our nations before.”