Tongues of Serpents t-6

by Naomi Novik

  “And perhaps Maximus or Lily might yet come and visit, or we might have an artist come and work up a painting of it, which we might send to them to look at; and another to send to my mother, also. I am sure she would be curious to see it, and it cannot fail to please. I do not think we have seen a valley like this in China: there are very many interesting places there, of course; and the city cannot be compared, but one might be very well content here, I think.”

  Laurence could not encourage him to hope for dragon visitors, but he was glad nevertheless to see Temeraire so contented. The men had built a small fire for the comfort of its light; the temperature had fallen in the dark to a milder degree, and, settled on Temeraire’s forearm, Laurence was conscious himself of a great weight lifted from his shoulders: if politics should deny them the chance to be of use in any material way in the war, there was at least work here to be done which he could not disdain, and the hope of building something rather than tearing away, to no purpose.

  The steady rush of Temeraire’s measured breathing made a constant like the ocean lapping the side of a ship; the wind breathed through the trees. Laurence slept, as solidly as he ever had in life, and roused to Temeraire snorting with displeasure and raising his head: Iskierka had nipped him on the back of the neck.

  “Whatever is the matter?” Temeraire said irritably. “I was having a very pleasant dream; you need not have interrupted me.”

  “There is no time to be sleeping!” Iskierka said. “—The egg is gone.”

  Part II

  Chapter 7

  “MY DEAR,” Laurence said, keeping his hand on Temeraire’s forearm by way of both comfort and urging restraint, “we cannot be haring into the countryside unguided: aloft you cannot follow a trail, and with the quantity of timber in this country even the most unhandy thief can evade you for the price of hiding concealed the day, and traveling at night.”

  “We cannot be sitting here while they are carrying the egg off to who knows what fate,” Temeraire said, his tail lashing so rapidly that Laurence feared he might do someone an injury; he was certainly wreaking destruction wholesale upon the vegetation in its path.

  The stunted little egg sat lonesome on its nest of dry leaves and branches, the empty space beside it mutely reproachful: evidently forced to choose amongst prizes, the thieves had taken the larger Yellow Reaper egg, and left the runt behind.

  Laurence had rarely seen Temeraire so roused, or Iskierka: a threat to himself or Granby offered the nearest comparison, and Laurence thought this might exceed even that passion: the greatest effort was visibly required to restrain them from immediate action, however purposeless; and Iskierka had already burnt up three trees by way of venting her feelings.

  “Pray keep in mind,” Granby said urgently, “that the thieves will take the very best care of the egg: they haven’t stolen it to do it harm, they want a dragon of their own, plainly; although,” he added more quietly to Laurence, as they went to consult with Tharkay, who had already set about examining the trail, “I don’t know whatever for: I have never heard of men, ordinary men that is, wanting anything to do with a dragon.”

  “If Tharkay’s supposition is right,” Laurence said, “these may not be ordinary smugglers; if Napoleon has gone to such lengths to undermine our trade, they may as likely be French soldiers as mere profiteers.”

  “Even so, what would they want with an egg, here?” Granby said. “They can’t mean to set up a covert of their own; it isn’t as though the French have any prayer of holding a colony here, their navy being what it is, and ours being what it is.”

  “Why do pirates steal ships?” Tharkay said, without looking up from the ground. “They hardly need to establish a covert to make use of a dragon; they need only to evade you, and hunt enough game to feed it. A good, reliable, middle-weight beast would suit them admirably, I imagine: a transport for their goods better than a mule-train, and which leaves no trail on the ground to be followed.”

  What few traces he had found of the smugglers led onward to the north-west; little to give them hope, but all the intelligence Temeraire required to cast off all restraint. “Let us go at once, then; what if they are taking the egg back to the coast, to a ship? Or they might drop it, or cause it some hurt; they are certainly not properly trained aviators, and they do not have a dragon with them. What if they do not feed it when it has hatched, and only try and chain it? Oh! There are a thousand dreadful things which might be happening to it even now.”

  “And we are certainly not going to find it sitting here,” Iskierka put in, which was true, but a species of logic which put an end to any rational design of the pursuit: the two of them would be off, at once, and when Caesar, evidently not yet inclined to so protective a view of his hypothetical year-mate, began to complain, Iskierka caught him by the ruff of his neck, shook him, and none too gently dragged him squalling and protesting up onto Temeraire’s back: they refused point-blank to be constrained by his slower pace.

  Laurence expected some protest from Rankin; but he made none, and Granby only shook his head and ordered his handful of men aboard. “Mr. Laurence,” Forthing said, a little formally, when Laurence turned, “we have the egg ready to go aboard, if Temeraire should please: I have taken the liberty of swaddling it with more padding, and Mr. Fellowes believes we may rig it hammock-fashion, that it should not suffer from any shaking which the pursuit might make necessary.”

  “That is very good,” Temeraire said, swinging his head around to inspect the arrangements, the first sign of approval he had offered Forthing; he nosed the well-wrapped egg a little to confirm and then squatted himself awkwardly that the fittings might be lashed to the breast-bands of his abbreviated harness, and to the broader band behind the wings, and the egg thus cradled gently rocking against his chest.

  There were some sidelong and hostile looks towards Forthing and this operation, from the few officers who had accompanied Granby: if they had grudged a little before that Forthing should be situated so near the eggs, and have the best prospects of securing for himself the captaincy of the preferable Yellow Reaper, Laurence could well imagine their feelings now. They had all swallowed an assignment to a remote and undesirable posting, with few chances of seeing all-important combat or of advancement, with the only consolation the prospect of promotion for men who could not have hoped for the step otherwise.

  Laurence did not think they would find the lost egg. Tharkay’s expression, looking at the trail, had not been sanguine, even if discretion had prevented him from conveying a discouraging opinion in the hearing of the excessively interested dragons. The smugglers must know their course, and anticipate pursuit: they had already found themselves at least this one route through the wilderness, and likely knew other passages.

  So there was one chance only left, the stunted egg: undesirable by comparison yet priceless now, and to make matters worse, this must substantially worsen the breeding prospects of the new colony. Jane meant to send them more eggs, Laurence knew, but these three had been intended as the foundation, and the Yellow Reaper perhaps the most critical. If the egg had hatched a sire, who might be bred against many other lines, Jane would have sent a wider variety of the eggs of many more desirable breeds, for which men already here and established in service could aim to be preferred. If the egg had hatched a dam, the aviators likely hoped that a lack of alternatives might incline Temeraire to affection.

  Whatever they might think of Temeraire’s personal habits of free-thinking, these they generally credited, Laurence knew, to his own account: when, he was dryly amused to think, the reverse was by far the truth of the matter. They certainly none of them had any objections to Temeraire’s capabilities from a military perspective.

  “A cross with a Reaper would be just the thing,” Laurence had overheard, more than once—marrying Temeraire’s virtues with the tractability and general good humor traditional to the Reaper breed, which had made it so widely preferred for service.

  But there would certainly be no hop
e of a crossing between Temeraire and the little creature that would come out of the final egg: and therefore likely no hope of any mating at all until more eggs arrived, unless the runt proved female, and willing to be interested in Caesar—who had not risen in the estimation of the aviators since his hatching; the possibility did not excite great anticipation.

  But there was nothing to be done. The Reaper egg was gone, and likely beyond all hope, even though they should have to go and search: Temeraire’s and Iskierka’s spirits could not bear otherwise. Only the slow grinding of time and failure would ease their grief and the disappointment to manageable levels. “We may hope, I suppose,” Laurence said to Tharkay quietly, as they parted to go aboard, “that this search will at least be of some use in your quest: if we do overshoot the smugglers, at least we can follow the trail to its culmination, and the source of their goods, which if it is a harbor of any consequence will not be easily replaced, when we have denied it to them with regular patrols.”

  “From my perspective, nothing could be better,” Tharkay said. “My fee was for tracing the smugglers’ methods; it would not extend to the hire of dragons and a company of men to hunt them down, nor certainly to their destruction: but I imagine the greatest difficulty will be cutting a few of them out for questioning, if our friends continue in their present sentiments.”

  Tharkay went to join Granby; Laurence swung himself up to Temeraire’s back without ceremony, and latched on to the harness at the back; Rankin was already hooked on and speaking quietly with the sulky Caesar.

  “If you wish it, my dear captain, of course I will oblige, even though I am sure I don’t see what the fuss is,” Caesar said, “or why we should be bundled about like bag and baggage, when we might just as easily stay here and keep watch over the cows.”

  He said it quietly, though, and Temeraire ignored him entirely, only swinging his head briefly about to say, “Laurence, you are quite secure?” and cast a glittering eye over the rest of his passengers: the slitted pupil was open unnaturally wide, with almost a hint of red glowing within, the reflection of the lowering sun.

  “I am,” Laurence said, and they were airborne: the valley and its green curves falling away, away, and the sandstone cliffs; its serenity already a distant memory, and the drumming of wings like the beat for the turning of the capstan, bringing the anchor up.

  The greatest danger, of course, Temeraire realized even through the distancing haze of fury, was they should overshoot the thieves, and miss them entirely: the men were carrying the egg, which should be a difficult burden for them, if they did not have waggons—Tharkay thought they did not—and of course, they were walking upon the ground in so tiresome a way, having to work through the brush.

  “We cannot only fly straight after them on the trail,” he told Iskierka. “Otherwise, we should soon go much further than they could possibly be, and meanwhile I am sure they should have hidden themselves somewhere aside, and be waiting for us to pass. We must be sure they are not in any countryside before we fly on out of it.”

  “I think we must fly sweeps,” Laurence said, and sketched for them the pattern: they should keep the trail in the center of their course, and fly first zigging west, and then north, in arcs like a swinging broom.

  Iskierka jetted steam from her spikes, restlessly. “How far do you think they might manage, to the side of the trail?” she asked. “If we go flying off all over the place, they will get ahead of us after all; and they might have horses, even if they don’t have waggons.”

  They decided after some debate on a span of five miles in either direction, and continuing north-west began the flying pattern. It was hard, distressing flying—every bit of pale stone that caught the eye made Temeraire’s heart leap uncomfortably in his chest, lest it should be the smooth creamy-pale shell, speckled black; so he was reminded at every turn of their dreadfully urgent purpose, and his head ached, too, from staring fixedly down at the ground.

  Iskierka, who did not have so many people to carry, dived over and over towards some flash of movement—and over and over came away only with some useless bit of game, a wretched kangaroo or one of the stringy-legged cassowaries. She shared with Temeraire, at least, so they might eat as they flew and thus waste no further time; and she was, he could not deny, very quick to see the little flashes of movement.

  It was comforting, not to be quite alone in the search; Iskierka was wrongheaded and irresponsible in almost every particular, and no one could enjoy her company, but in this one instance where they were of united mind and purpose, he might acknowledge her a valuable presence. On occasion—very few occasions, of course—she even saw something which he himself had not just yet noticed.

  “Is that—” he began, and Iskierka dived at once: there was a knot of trees and low, coarse shrubbery, where he thought he had seen a glimmer of movement. She blasted the stand with fire, a quick hot roaring which did not properly catch in the greenery, but would have stunned any enemy within, and then tore into the trees: saplings and bushes cast aside into a singed heap, while she thrust her head within and searched, reaching in her talons to claw and snatch at the ground.

  And withdrew: she had a few small rodents collected in a handful of dirt, asphyxiated dead and barely each of them a bite. They ate them anyway, raw and uncleaned. It was of a piece with the sensation Temeraire recognized, of being removed from a place of conscious thought: but then, at present thought was not necessary, nor desirable; and neither was anything like sensibility. They needed only fly, and seek, and hunt so far as was needed to sustain life: he could not be very sorry to be reduced to an animal state, at present, when he must suffer otherwise a fresh dose of self-recrimination.

  Iskierka, he had to admit, had not accused him. She might have said, What were you about, to let the egg be left unguarded? Or she might have reproached him for sleeping, or sleeping so soundly, that someone had managed to spirit it away. She had not. Of course, Temeraire might have answered back with the same charge; but he had kept charge of the eggs all the long way from Britain: Iskierka had not had a full share in looking after them. He had not let her have it; and if he had, he was miserably forced to consider, perhaps she would have been more wary, or more alert; perhaps she would not have let the egg be taken.

  He had much rather not think at all, than think along such lines. He tore into his little wombats for what virtue they had: they were thin and lean, but each one a small hot bite of juice, revitalizing.

  “Are you hungry, Laurence?” Temeraire asked, surfacing only so far from his intent preoccupation.

  “No; we do well enough with biscuit, have no fear on that score,” Laurence said, “but my dear, we cannot keep searching for very much longer tonight. The light is failing.”

  “We can make torches,” Iskierka said, and turning set her claws into one of the larger eucalypts, shaking it back and forth until at last its roots came loose; a torrent of fire ignited the tree-top and made an oily flame, pungent and queerly medicinal in smell.

  But it was not quite so easy as it might have sounded to throw the light properly onto the ground, and when Iskierka had made a torch for Temeraire, he found that holding it was awkward, particularly as he had to be careful of the last little egg hanging forward on his breast, and the convicts slung below in his netting, whenever the wind pushed the fire towards his belly.

  He saw the torchlight flicker in reflection, on something on the ground, and turned quite by instinct; cries warned him, and he jerked the torch abruptly aside, but in so doing singed his talons painfully, and dropped it. He half-reached for the falling torch, but then he reconsidered: and went instead for that small reflection, while he yet could place where it had come from.

  But he only landed upon stone, and clawing away found only more. Iskierka brought her light over, and it shone abruptly in red and green and pearlescent fire, on a narrow vein his scraping had exposed in the rock.

  “Opal,” Tharkay said. The stone was beautiful, and under any other circumstance T
emeraire would have greeted the discovery with the utmost pleasure: he could feel nothing for it now, nothing in the least, but only the sharp and bitter disappointment of failure and regret.

  “I am very sorry; I beg you will not press on again. You cannot help but miss more than you find, with this method,” Laurence said quietly. “The nights are grown short, in this part of the world; dawn will come soon, and you must have some rest in any case. Better to sleep a little while, and rise at the earliest traces of light.”

  The fallen torch was burning down to embers, a little distance off, the only gleam of light anywhere around; all the night seemed very black but for the spray of stars above, and that last orange glow. Iskierka with a low hiss of frustration and wrath flung her own torch aside, and cast herself down in a restless, coiling tumble to sleep.

  Temeraire stayed only long enough to be unloaded, although he said, “No; you may leave it there, and the harness; I find I can sleep quite well with it on after all,” when they would have taken off the little egg. He felt very weary suddenly, although he would not have stopped, not for anything, if only there had been any way of continuing the search. He arranged himself carefully on the ground, propped up a little and with the last egg bracketed within his arms, where no one could have come at it without disturbing him.

  It did not quite answer, though; uneasily he realized he was used to people clambering over him; so small and light as they were, he might never notice. He decided he should only rest. But sleep stole treacherously over him: his head drooped, his eyelids sank shut, and then the wind shifted, or a branch rubbed along his wing, and he managed to jerk awake again; he nosed anxiously at the egg and made sure all was well, and then the enemy sleep was creeping up again.

  He was so tired; and then Laurence, dear Laurence, put a hand on his forearm and climbed over, to sit beside the egg. “Pray get as much rest as you can,” he said. “I can sleep tomorrow when you must be flying.”