by Naomi Novik
“Temeraire! Stop that at once; at once, do you hear me?” Laurence said sharply; he had never spoken so, not since the first weeks of Temeraire’s existence, and Temeraire dropped down in surprise, his wings furling in tight on instinct. “Purbeck, you will leave my men to me, if you please; stand down, master-at-arms,” Laurence said, snapping orders quickly: he did not mean to allow the scene to progress further, nor turn into some open struggle between the aviators and seamen. “Mr. Ferris,” he said, “take Blythe below and confine him.”
“Yes, sir,” Ferris said, already shoving through the crowd, and pushing the aviators back around him, breaking up the knots of angry men even before he reached Blythe.
Watching the progress with hard eyes, Laurence added, loudly, “Mr. Martin, to my cabin at once. Back to your work, all of you; Mr. Keynes, come here.”
He stayed another moment, but he was satisfied: the pressing danger had been averted. He turned from the rail, trusting to ordinary discipline to break up the rest of the crowd. But Temeraire was huddled down very nearly flat, looking at him with a startled, unhappy expression; Laurence reached out to him and flinched as Temeraire twitched away: not out of reach, but the impulse plainly visible.
“Forgive me,” Laurence said, dropping his hand, a tightness in his throat. “Temeraire,” he said, and stopped; he did not know what to say, for Temeraire could not be allowed to act so: he might have caused real damage to the ship, and aside from that if he carried on in such a fashion the crew would shortly grow too terrified of him to do their work. “You have not hurt yourself?” he asked, instead, as Keynes hurried over.
“No,” Temeraire said, very quietly. “I am perfectly well.” He submitted to being examined, in silence, and Keynes pronounced him unharmed by the exertion.
“I must go and speak with Martin,” Laurence said, still at a loss; Temeraire did not answer, but curled himself up and swept his wings forward, around his head, and after a long moment, Laurence left the deck and went below.
The cabin was close and hot, even with all the windows standing open, and not calculated to improve Laurence’s temper. Martin was pacing the length of the cabin in agitation; he was untidy in a suit of warm-weather slops, his face two days unshaven and presently flushed, his hair too long and flopping over his eyes. He did not recognize the degree of Laurence’s real anger, but burst out talking the moment Laurence came in.
“I am so very sorry; it was all my fault. I oughtn’t have spoken at all,” he said, even while Laurence limped to his chair and sat down heavily. “You cannot punish Blythe, Laurence.”
Laurence had grown used to the lack of formality among aviators, and ordinarily did not balk at this liberty in passing, but for Martin to make use of it under the circumstances was so egregious that Laurence sat back and stared at him, outrage plainly written on his face. Martin went pale under his freckled skin, swallowed, and hurriedly said, “I mean, Captain, sir.”
“I will do whatever I must to keep order among this crew, Mr. Martin, which appears to be more than I thought necessary,” Laurence said, and moderated his volume only with a great effort; he felt truly savage. “You will tell me at once what happened.”
“I didn’t mean to,” Martin said, much subdued. “That fellow Reynolds has been making remarks all week, and Ferris told us to pay him no mind, but I was walking by, and he said—”
“I am not interested in hearing you bear tales,” Laurence said. “What did you do?”
“Oh—” Martin said, flushing. “I only said—well, I said something back, which I should rather not repeat; and then he—” Martin stopped, and looked somewhat confused as to how to finish the story without seeming to accuse Reynolds again, and finished lamely, “At any rate, sir, he was on the point of offering me a challenge, and that was when Blythe knocked him down; he only did it because he knew I could not fight, and did not want to see me have to refuse in front of the sailors; truly, sir, it is my fault, and not his.”
“I cannot disagree with you in the least,” Laurence said, brutally, and was glad in his anger to see Martin’s shoulders hunch forward, as if struck. “And when I have to have Blythe flogged on Sunday for striking an officer, I hope you will keep in mind that he is paying for your lack of self-restraint. You are dismissed; you are to keep belowdecks and to your quarters for the week, save when defaulters are called.”
Martin’s lips worked a moment; his “Yes, sir,” emerged only faintly, and he was almost stumbling as he left the room. Laurence sat still breathing harshly, almost panting in the thick air; the anger slowly deserted him in spite of every effort, and gave way to a heavier, bitter oppression. Blythe had saved not only Martin’s reputation but that of the aviators as a whole; if Martin had openly refused a challenge made in front of the entire crew, it would have blackened all their characters; no matter that it was forced on them by the regulations of the Corps, which forbade dueling.
And yet there was no room for leniency in the matter whatsoever. Blythe had openly struck an officer before witnesses, and Laurence would have to sentence him to sufficient punishment to give the sailors satisfaction, and all of the men pause against any future capers of the sort. And the punishment would be carried out by the bosun’s mate: a sailor, like as not to relish the chance to be severe on an aviator, particularly for such an offense.
He would have to go and speak with Blythe; but a tapping at the door broke in upon him before he could rise, and Riley came in: unsmiling, in his coat and with his hat under his arm, neckcloth freshly tied.
Chapter 7
THEY DREW NEAR Cape Coast a week later with the atmosphere of ill-will a settled and living thing among them, as palpable as the heat. Blythe had taken ill from his brutal flogging; he still lay nearly senseless in the sick-bay, the other ground-crew hands taking it in turn to sit by him and fan the bloody weals, and to coax him to take some water. They had taken the measure of Laurence’s temper, and so their bitterness against the sailors was not expressed in word or direct action, but in sullen, black looks and murmurs, and abrupt silences whenever a sailor came in earshot.
Laurence had not dined in the great cabin since the incident: Riley had been offended at having Purbeck corrected on the deck; Laurence had grown short in turn when Riley refused to unbend and made it plain he was not satisfied by the dozen lashes which were all Laurence would sentence. In the heat of discussion, Laurence had let slip some suggestion of his distaste for going to the slave port, Riley had resented the implication, and they had ended not in shouting but in cold formality.
But worse by far than this, Temeraire’s spirits were very low. He had forgiven Laurence the moment of harshness, and been persuaded to understand that some punishment was necessary for the offense. But he had not been at all reconciled to the actual event, and during the flogging he had growled savagely when Blythe had screamed towards the end. Some good had come of that: the bosun’s mate Hingley, who had been wielding the cat with more than usual energy, had been alarmed, and the last couple of strokes had been mild; but the damage had already been done.
Temeraire had since remained unhappy and quiet, answering only briefly, and he was not eating well. The sailors, for their part, were as dissatisfied with the light sentence as the aviators were with the brutality; poor Martin, set to tanning hides with the harness-master for punishment, was more wretched with guilt than from his punishment, and spent every spare moment at Blythe’s bedside; and the only person at all satisfied with the situation was Yongxing, who seized the opportunity to hold several more long conversations with Temeraire in Chinese: privately, as Temeraire made no effort to include Laurence.
Yongxing looked less pleased, however, at the conclusion of the last of these, when Temeraire hissed, put back his ruff, and then proceeded to all but knock Laurence off his feet in coiling possessively around him. “What has he been saying to you?” Laurence demanded, trying futilely to peer above the great black sides rising around him; he had already reached a state of high irritat
ion at Yongxing’s continued interference and was very nearly at the end of his patience.
“He has been telling me about China, and how things are managed there for dragons,” Temeraire said, evasively, by which Laurence suspected that Temeraire had liked these described arrangements. “But then he told me I should have a more worthy companion there, and you would be sent away.”
By the time he could be persuaded to uncoil himself again, Yongxing had gone, “looking mad as fire,” Ferris reported, with glee unbecoming a senior lieutenant.
This scarcely contented Laurence. “I am not going to have Temeraire distressed in this manner,” he said to Hammond angrily, trying without success to persuade the diplomat to carry a highly undiplomatic message to the prince.
“You are taking a very short-sighted view of the matter,” Hammond said, maddeningly. “If Prince Yongxing can be convinced over the course of this journey that Temeraire will not agree to be parted from you, all the better for us: they will be far more ready to negotiate when finally we arrive in China.” He paused and asked, with still more infuriating anxiousness, “You are quite certain, that he will not agree?”
On hearing the account that evening, Granby said, “I say we heave Hammond and Yongxing over the side together some dark night, and good riddance,” expressing Laurence’s private sentiments more frankly than Laurence himself felt he could. Granby was speaking, with no regard for manners, between bites of a light meal of soup, toasted cheese, potatoes fried in pork fat with onions, an entire roast chicken, and a mince pie: he had finally been released from his sickbed, pallid and much reduced in weight, and Laurence had invited him to supper. “What else was that prince saying to him?”
“I have not the least idea; he has not said three words together in English the last week,” Laurence said. “And I do not mean to press Temeraire to tell me; it would be the most officious, prying sort of behavior.”
“That none of his friends should ever be flogged there, I expect,” Granby said, darkly. “And that he should have a dozen books to read every day, and heaps of jewels. I have heard stories about this sort of thing, but if a fellow ever really tried it, they would drum him out of the Corps quick as lightning; if the dragon did not carve him into joints, first.”
Laurence was silent a moment, twisting his wineglass in his fingers. “Temeraire is only listening to it at all because he is unhappy.”
“Oh, Hell.” Granby sat back heavily. “I am damned sorry I have been sick so long; Ferris is a right’un, but he hasn’t been on a transport before, he couldn’t know how the sailors get, and how to properly teach the fellows to take no notice,” he said glumly. “And I can’t give you any advice for cheering him up; I served with Laetificat longest, and she is easy-going even for a Regal Copper: no temper to speak of, and no mood I ever saw could dampen her appetite. Maybe it is not being allowed to fly.”
They came into the harbor the next morning: a broad semicircle with a golden beach, dotted with attractive palms under the squat white walls of the overlooking castle. A multitude of rough canoes, many with branches still attached to the trunks from which they had been hollowed, were plying the waters of the harbor, and besides these there could be seen an assortment of brigs and schooners, and at the western end a snow of middling size, with her boats swarming back and forth, crowded with blacks who were being herded along from a tunnel mouth that came out onto the beach itself.
The Allegiance was too large to come into the harbor proper, but she had anchored close enough; the day was calm, and the cracking of the whips perfectly audible over the water, mingled with cries and the steady sound of weeping. Laurence came frowning onto the deck and ordered Roland and Dyer away from their wide-eyed staring, sending them below to tidy his cabin. Temeraire could not be protected in the same manner, and was observing the proceedings with some confusion, the slitted pupils of his eyes widening and narrowing as he stared.
“Laurence, those men are all in chains; what can so many of them have done?” he demanded, roused from his apathy. “They cannot all have committed crimes; look, that one over there is a small child, and there is another.”
“No,” Laurence said. “That is a slaver; pray do not watch.” Fearing this moment, he had made a vague attempt at explaining the idea of slavery to Temeraire, with his lack of success due as much to his own distaste as to Temeraire’s difficulty with the notion of property. Temeraire did not listen now, but kept watching, his tail switching rapidly in anxiety. The loading of the vessel continued throughout the morning, and the hot wind blowing from the shore carried the sour smell of unwashed bodies, sweating and ill with misery.
At length the boarding was finished, and the snow with her unhappy cargo came out of the harbor and spread her sails to the wind, throwing up a fine furrow as she went past them, already moving at a steady pace, sailors scrambling in the rigging; but full half her crew were only armed landsmen, sitting idly about on deck with their muskets and pistols and mugs of grog. They stared openly at Temeraire, curious, their faces unsmiling, sweating and grimy from the work; one of them even picked up his gun and sighted along it at Temeraire, as if for sport. “Present arms!” Lieutenant Riggs snapped, before Laurence could even react, and the three riflemen on deck had their guns ready in an instant; across the water, the fellow lowered his musket and grinned, showing strong yellowed teeth, and turned back to his shipmates laughing.
Temeraire’s ruff was flattened, not out of any fear, as a musket-ball fired at such a range would have done him less injury than a mosquito to a man, but with great distaste. He gave a low rumbling growl and almost drew a deep preparatory breath; Laurence laid a hand on his side, quietly said, “No; it can do no good,” and stayed with him until at last the snow shrank away over the horizon, and passed out of their sight.
Even after she had gone, Temeraire’s tail continued to flick unhappily back and forth. “No, I am not hungry,” he said, when Laurence suggested some food, and stayed very quiet again, occasionally scraping at the deck with his claws, unconsciously, making a dreadful grating noise.
Riley was at the far end of the ship, walking the poop deck, but there were many sailors in earshot, getting the launch and the officers’ barge over the side, preparing to begin the process of supply, and Lord Purbeck was overseeing; in any case one could not say anything on deck in full voice and not expect it to have traveled to the other end and back in less time than it would take to walk the distance. Laurence was conscious of the plain rudeness of seeming to criticize Riley on the deck of his own ship, even without the quarrel already lingering between them, but at last he could not forbear.
“Pray do not be so distressed,” he said, trying to console Temeraire, without going so far as to speak too bluntly against the practice. “There is reason to hope that the trade will soon be stopped; the question will come before Parliament again this very session.”
Temeraire brightened perceptibly at the news, but he was unsatisfied with so bare an explanation and proceeded to inquire with great energy into the prospects of abolition; Laurence perforce had to explain Parliament and the distinction between the Commons and the Lords and the various factions engaged in the debate, relying for his particulars on his father’s activities, but aware all the while that he was overheard and trying as best he could to be politic.
Even Sun Kai, who had been on deck the whole morning, and seen the progress of the snow and its effects on Temeraire’s mood, gazed upon him thoughtfully, evidently guessing at some of the conversation; he had come as near as he could without crossing the painted border, and during a break, he asked Temeraire to translate for him. Temeraire explained a little; Sun Kai nodded, and then inquired of Laurence, “Your father is an official then, and feels this practice dishonorable?”
Such a question, put baldly, could not be evaded however much it might offend; silence would be very nearly dishonest. “Yes, sir, he does,” Laurence said, and before Sun Kai could prolong the conversation with further inquiries, Keynes
came up to the deck; Laurence hailed him to ask him for permission to take Temeraire on a short flight to shore, and so was able to cut short the discussion. Even so abbreviated, however, it did no good for relations aboard ship; the sailors, mostly without strong opinions on the subject, naturally took their own captain’s part, and felt Riley ill-used by the open expression of such sentiments on his ship when his own family connections to the trade were known.
The post was rowed back shortly before the hands’ dinner-time, and Lord Purbeck chose to send the young midshipman Reynolds, who had set off the recent quarrel, to bring over the letters for the aviators: nearly a piece of deliberate provocation. The boy himself, his eye still blacked from Blythe’s powerful blow, smirked so insolently that Laurence instantly resolved on ending Martin’s punishment duty, nearly a week before he had otherwise intended, and said quite deliberately, “Temeraire, look; we have a letter from Captain Roland; it will have news of Dover, I am sure.” Temeraire obligingly put his head down to inspect the letter; the ominous shadow of the ruff and the serrated teeth gleaming so nearby made a profound impression on Reynolds: the smirk vanished, and almost as quickly so did he himself, hastily retreating from the dragondeck.
Laurence stayed on deck to read the letters with Temeraire. Jane Roland’s letter, scarcely a page long, had been sent only a few days after their departure and had very little news, only a cheerful account of the life of the covert; heartening to read, even if it left Temeraire sighing a little for home, and Laurence with much the same sentiments. He was a little puzzled, however, at receiving no other letters from his colleagues; since a courier had come through, he had expected to have something from Harcourt, at least, whom he knew to be a good correspondent, and perhaps one of the other captains.
