by Naomi Novik
“At least we may be grateful that De Guignes is as restricted in his movements as we are,” Hammond said after a moment. “I cannot think Yongxing would bother to lie on the subject, though I cannot understand how—” He stopped in puzzlement and shook his head. “Well, perhaps I may learn a little more tomorrow.”
“I beg your pardon?” Laurence said, and Hammond absently said, “He said he would come again, at the same time; he means to make a regular visit of it.”
“He may mean whatever he likes,” Laurence said, angrily, at finding Hammond had thus meekly accepted further intrusions on his behalf, “but I will not be playing attendance on him; and why you should choose to waste your time cultivating a man you know very well has not the least sympathy for us is beyond me.”
Hammond, answered with some heat, “Of course Yongxing has no natural sympathy for us; why should he or any other man here? Our work is to win them over, and if he is willing to give us the chance to persuade him, it is our duty to try, sir; I am surprised that the effort of remaining civil and drinking a little tea should so try your patience.”
Laurence snapped, “And I am surprised to find you so unconcerned over this attempt at supplanting me, after all your earlier protests.”
“What, with a twelve-year-old boy?” Hammond said, so very incredulous it was nearly offensive. “I, sir, in my turn, am astonished at your taking alarm now; and perhaps if you had not been so quick to dismiss my advice before, you should not have so much need to fear.”
“I do not fear in the least,” Laurence said, “but neither am I disposed to tolerate so blatant an attempt, or to have us submit tamely to a daily invasion whose only purpose is to give offense.”
“I will remind you, Captain, as you did me not so very long ago, that just as you are not under my authority, I am not under yours,” Hammond said. “The conduct of our diplomacy has very clearly been placed in my hands, and thank Heaven: if we were relying upon you, by now I dare say you would be blithely flying back to England, with half our trade in the Pacific sinking to the bottom of the ocean behind you.”
“Very well; you may do as you like, sir,” Laurence said, “but you had best make plain to him that I do not mean to leave this protégé of his alone with Temeraire anymore, and I think you will find him less eager to be persuaded afterwards; and do not imagine,” he added, “that I will tolerate having the boy let in when my back is turned, either.”
“As you are disposed to think me a liar and an unscrupulous schemer, I see very little purpose in denying I should do any such thing,” Hammond said angrily, coloring up.
He departed instantly, leaving Laurence still angry but ashamed and conscious of having been unfair; he would himself have called it grounds for a challenge. By the next morning, when from the pavilion he saw Yongxing going away with the boy, having evidently cut short the visit on being denied access to Temeraire, his guilt was sharp enough that he made some attempt to apologize, with little success: Hammond would have none of it.
“Whether he took offense at your refusing to join us, or whether you were correct about his aims, can make no difference now,” he said, very coldly. “If you will excuse me, I have letters to write,” and so quitted the room.
Laurence gave it up and instead went to say farewell to Temeraire, only to have his guilt and unhappiness both renewed at seeing in Temeraire’s manner an almost furtive excitement, a very great eagerness to be gone. Hammond was hardly wrong: the idle flattery of a child was nothing to the danger of the company of Qian and the Imperial dragons, no matter how devious Yongxing’s motives or how sincere Qian’s; there was only less honest excuse for complaining of her.
Temeraire would be gone for hours, but the house being small and the chambers separated mainly by screens of rice paper, Hammond’s angry presence was nearly palpable inside, so Laurence stayed in the pavilion after he had gone, attending to his correspondence: unnecessarily, as it was now five months since he had received any letters, and little of any interest had occurred since the welcoming dinner party, now two weeks old; he was not disposed to write of the quarrel with Hammond.
He dozed off over the writing, and woke rather abruptly, nearly knocking heads with Sun Kai, who was bending over him and shaking him. “Captain Laurence, you must wake up,” Sun Kai was saying.
Laurence said automatically, “I beg your pardon; what is the matter?” and then stared: Sun Kai had spoken in quite excellent English, with an accent more reminiscent of Italian than Chinese. “Good Lord, have you been able to speak English all this time?” he demanded, his mind leaping to every occasion on which Sun Kai had stood on the dragondeck, privy to all their conversations, and now revealed as having understood every word.
“There is no time at present for explanations,” Sun Kai said. “You must come with me at once: men are coming here to kill you, and all your companions also.”
It was near on five o’clock in the afternoon, and the lake and trees, framed in the pavilion doors, were golden in the setting light; birds were speaking occasionally from up in the rafters where they nested. The remark, delivered in perfectly calm tones, was so ludicrous Laurence did not at first understand it, and then stood up in outrage. “I am not going anywhere in response to such a threat, with so little explanation,” he said, and raised his voice. “Granby!”
“Everything all right, sir?” Blythe had been occupying himself in the neighboring courtyard on some busy-work, and now poked his head in, even as Granby came running.
“Mr. Granby, we are evidently to expect an attack,” Laurence said. “As this house does not admit of much security, we will take the small pavilion to the south, with the interior pond. Establish a lookout, and let us have fresh locks in all the pistols.”
“Very good,” Granby said, and dashed away again; Blythe, in his customary silence, picked up the cutlasses he had been sharpening and offered Laurence one before wrapping up the others and carrying them with his whetstone to the pavilion.
Sun Kai shook his head. “This is great foolishness,” he said, following after Laurence. “The very largest gang of hunhun are coming from the city. I have a boat waiting just here, and there is time yet for you and all your men to get your things and come away.”
Laurence inspected the pavilion entryway; as he had remembered, the pillars were made of stone rather than wood, and nearly two feet in diameter, very sturdy, and the walls of a smooth grey brick under their layer of red paint. The roof was of wood, which was a pity, but he thought the glazed tile would not catch fire easily. “Blythe, will you see if you can arrange some elevation for Lieutenant Riggs and his riflemen out of those stones in the garden? Pray assist him, Willoughby; thank you.”
Turning around, he said to Sun Kai, “Sir, you have not said where you would take me, nor who these assassins are, nor whence they have been sent; still less have you given us any reason to trust you. You have certainly deceived us so far as your knowledge of our language. Why you should so abruptly reverse yourself, I have no idea, and after the treatment which we have received, I am in no humor to put myself into your hands.”
Hammond came with the other men, looking confused, and came to join Laurence, greeting Sun Kai in Chinese. “May I inquire what is happening?” he asked stiffly.
“Sun Kai has told me to expect another attempt at assassination,” Laurence said. “See if you can get anything more clear from him; in the meantime, I must assume we are shortly to come under attack, and make arrangements. He can speak perfect English,” he added. “You need not resort to Chinese.” He left Sun Kai with a visibly startled Hammond, and joined Riggs and Granby at the entryway.
“If we could knock a couple of holes in this front wall, we could shoot down at any of them coming,” Riggs said, tapping the brick. “Otherwise, sir, we’re best off laying down a barricade mid-room, and shooting as they come in; but then we can’t have fellows with swords at the entryway.”
“Lay and man the barricade,” Laurence said. “Mr. Granby, bloc
k as much of this entryway as you can, so they cannot come in more than three or four abreast if you can manage it. We will form up the rest of the men to either side of the opening, well clear of the field of fire, and hold the door with pistols and cutlasses between volleys while Mr. Riggs and his fellows reload.”
Granby and Riggs both nodded. “Right you are,” Riggs said. “We have a couple of spare rifles along, sir; we could use you at the barricade.”
This was rather transparent, and Laurence treated it with the contempt which it deserved. “Use them for second shots as you can; we cannot waste the guns in the hands of any man who is not a trained rifleman.”
Keynes came in almost staggering under a basket of sheets, with three of the elaborate porcelain vases from their residence laid on top. “You are not my usual kind of patients,” he said, “but I can bandage and splint you, at any rate. I will be in the back by the pond. And I have brought these to carry water in,” he added, sardonic, jerking his chin at the vases. “I suppose they would bring fifty pounds each in auction, so let that be an encouragement not to drop them.”
“Roland, Dyer; which of you is the better hand at reloading?” Laurence asked. “Very well; you will both help Mr. Riggs for the first three volleys, then Dyer, you are to help Mr. Keynes, and run back and forth with the water jugs as that duty permits.”
“Laurence,” Granby said in an undertone, when the others had gone, “I don’t see any sign of all those guards anywhere, and they have always been used to patrol at this hour; they must have been called away by someone.”
Laurence nodded silently and waved him back to work. “Mr. Hammond, you will pray go behind the barricade,” he said, as the diplomat came to his side, Sun Kai with him.
“Captain Laurence, I beg you to listen to me,” Hammond said urgently. “We had much better go with Sun Kai at once. These attackers he expects are young bannermen, members of the Tartar tribes, who from poverty and lack of occupation have gone into a sort of local brigandage, and there may be a great many of them.”
“Will they have any artillery?” Laurence asked, paying no attention to the attempt at persuasion.
“Cannon? No, of course not; they do not even have muskets,” Sun Kai said, “but what does that matter? There may be one hundred of them or more, and I have heard rumors that some among them have even studied Shaolin Quan, in secret, though it is against the law.”
“And some of them may be, however distantly, kin to the Emperor,” Hammond added. “If we were to kill one, it could easily be used as a pretext for taking offense, and casting us out of the country; you must see we ought to leave at once.”
“Sir, you will give us some privacy,” Laurence said to Sun Kai, flatly, and the envoy did not argue, but silently bowed his head and moved some distance away.
“Mr. Hammond,” Laurence said, turning to him, “you yourself warned me to beware of attempts to separate me from Temeraire, now only consider: if he should return here, to find us gone, with no explanation and all our baggage gone also, how should he ever find us again? Perhaps he might even be convinced that we had been given a treaty and left him deliberately behind, as Yongxing once desired me to do.”
“And how will the case be improved if he returns and finds you dead, and all of us with you?” Hammond said impatiently. “Sun Kai has before now given us cause to trust him.”
“I give less weight to a small piece of inconsequential advice than you do, sir, and more to a long and deliberate lie of omission; he has unquestionably spied on us from the very beginning of our acquaintance,” Laurence said. “No; we are not going with him. It will not be more than a few hours before Temeraire returns, and I am confident in our holding out that long.”
“Unless they have found some means of distracting him, and keeping him longer at his visit,” Hammond said. “If the Chinese government meant to separate us from him, they could have done so by force at any time during his absence. I am sure Sun Kai can arrange to have a message sent to him at his mother’s residence once we have gone to safety.”
“Then let him go and send the message now, if he likes,” Laurence said. “You are welcome to go with him.”
“No, sir,” Hammond said, flushing, and turned on his heel to speak with Sun Kai. The former envoy shook his head and left, and Hammond went to take a cutlass from the ready heap.
They worked for another quarter of an hour, hauling in three of the queer-shaped boulders from outside to make the barricade for the riflemen, and dragging over the enormous dragon-couch to block off most of the entryway. The sun had gone by now, but the usual lanterns did not make their appearance around the island, nor any signs of human life at all.
“Sir!” Digby hissed suddenly, pointing out into the grounds. “Two points to starboard, outside the doors of the house.”
“Away from the entry,” Laurence said; he could not see anything in the twilight, but Digby’s young eyes were better than his. “Willoughby, douse that light.”
The soft click-click of the guns being cocked, the echo of his own breath in his ears, the constant untroubled hum of the flies and mosquitoes outside; these were at first the only noise, until use filtered them out and he could hear the light running footsteps outside: a great many men, he thought. Abruptly there was a crash of wood, several yells. “They’ve broken into the house, sir,” Hackley whispered hoarsely from the barricades.
“Quiet, there,” Laurence said, and they kept a silent vigil while the sound of breaking furniture and shattering glass came from the house. The flare of torches outside cast shadows into the pavilion, weaving and leaping in strange angles as a search commenced. Laurence heard men calling to each other outside, the sound coming down from the eaves of the roof. He glanced back; Riggs nodded, and the three riflemen raised their guns.
The first man appeared in the entrance and saw the wooden slab of the dragon-couch blocking it. “My shot,” Riggs said clearly, and fired: the Chinaman fell dead with his mouth open to shout.
But the report of the gun brought more cries from outside, and men came bursting in with swords and torches in their hands; a full volley fired off, killing another three, then one more shot from the last rifle, and Riggs called, “Prime and reload!”
The quick slaughter of their fellows had checked the advance of the larger body of men, and clustered them in the opening left in the doorway. Yelling “Temeraire!” and “England!” the aviators launched themselves from the shadows, and engaged the attackers close at hand.
The torchlight was painful to Laurence’s eyes after the long wait in the dark, and the smoke of the burning wood mingled with that from the musketry. There was no room for any real swordplay; they were engaged hilt-to-hilt, except when one of the Chinese swords broke—they smelled of rust—and a few men fell over. Otherwise they were all simply heaving back against the pressure of dozens of bodies, trying to come through the narrow opening.
Digby, being too slim to be of much use in the human wall, was stabbing at the attackers between their legs, their arms, through any space left open. “My pistols,” Laurence shouted at him; no chance to pull them free himself: he was holding his cutlass with two hands, one upon the hilt and another laid upon the flat of the blade, keeping off three men. They were packed so close together they could not move either way to strike at him, but could only raise and lower their swords in a straight line, trying to break his blade through sheer weight.
Digby pulled one of the pistols out of its holster, and fired, taking the man directly before Laurence between the eyes. The other two involuntarily pulled back, and Laurence managed to stab one in the belly, then seized the other by the sword-arm and threw him to the ground; Digby put a sword into his back, and he lay still.
“Present arms!” Riggs yelled, from behind, and Laurence bellowed, “Clear the door!” He swung a cut at the head of the man engaged with Granby, making him flinch back, and they scrambled back together, the polished stone floor already slick under their bootheels. Someone pushed
the dripping jug into his hand; he swallowed a couple of times and passed it on, wiping his mouth and his forehead against his sleeve. The rifles all fired at once, and another couple of shots after; then they were back into the fray.
The attackers had already learned to fear the rifles, and they had left a little clear space before the door, many milling about a few paces off under the torches; they nearly filled the courtyard before the pavilion: Sun Kai’s estimate had not been exaggerated. Laurence shot a man six paces away, then flipped the pistol in his hand; as they came rushing back on, he clubbed another in the side of the head, and then he was again pushing back against the weight of the swords, until Riggs shouted again.
“Well done, gentlemen,” Laurence said, breathing deeply. The Chinese had retreated at the shout and were not immediately at the door; Riggs had experience enough to hold the volley until they advanced again. “For the moment, the advantage is ours. Mr. Granby, we will divide into two parties. Stay back this next wave, and we shall alternate. Therrows, Willoughby, Digby, with me; Martin, Blythe, and Hammond, with Granby.”
“I can go with both, sir,” Digby said. “I’m not tired at all, truly; it’s less work for me, since I can’t help to hold them.”
“Very well, but be sure to take water between, and stay back on occasion,” Laurence said. “There are a damned lot of them, as I dare say you have all seen,” he said candidly. “But our position is a good one, and I have no doubt we can hold them as long as ever need be, so long as we pace ourselves properly.”
“And see Keynes at once to be tied up if you take a cut or a blow—we cannot afford to lose anyone to slow bleeding,” Granby added to this, while Laurence nodded. “Only sing out, and someone will come to take your place in line.”
A sudden feverish many-voiced yell rose from outside, the men working themselves up to facing the volley, then a pounding of running feet, and Riggs shouted, “Fire!” as the attackers stormed the entryway again.
