Tongues of Serpents: A Novel of Temeraire

by Naomi Novik

  Laurence paused, and doubtfully said, “I had not considered that her philosophy was so opposed to opening the borders of China, in its principles; it is incongruous, a little,” then fell silent.

  “That is just what I mean,” Temeraire said. “She is perfectly happy to throw all of that over, if only it will hurt us: just her sort of unpleasantness. Laurence, I do not mean to complain,” he added, “for this water is very nice—so fresh and crisp!—but I am hungry.”

  Tharkay’s little creek had led them, with only half-an-hour’s flight, to the river into which it merged: wide and clear, and lined along both banks with tall, tall pines. The river flowed in the wrong direction for their needs, south towards Sydney instead of away, and anyway it was full of rocks and very shallow in places; but there was room to walk along its banks, and Tharkay was of the opinion that if they should follow it upstream, they might well find it beginning somewhere in a pass, on the other side of the mountains.

  Temeraire thought it an excellent idea to stay close to the river, in any case; one grew so very parched, much more quickly than one might have expected, and then of course there was Caesar—

  He cast a disgusted look over: Caesar had needed to be carried to the river, even after they had given him two canteens full of water, and told him there was more to be had, even more cool and refreshing; it had not stirred him to make any effort. He had only said, “I don’t care to fly, just yet; Temeraire may take me,” in the most casual way, and sighed even when asked to climb up onto Temeraire’s back. And when they had finally brought him to the river, he had climbed down and, before anyone could stop him, walked straight on off the bank to immerse himself, so everyone else who wished to drink or to fill a canteen had to use a less convenient place further upstream.

  Even the poor sick convict Jonas Green had done better: he had roused up quite heroically when given a full cup, and said, “Damn me if I will die, after all: let me have some more!” and although he trembled dreadfully when he tried to stand, he hobbled over with two men helping him, and sat by the bank until he had managed to wash himself all over, and his wretchedly stinking clothing also, all of which he spread beside him on some flat stones, in the sunlight, to dry.

  Caesar, on the other hand, had to be reminded to drink; and then not allowed to drink too much; and then prodded sharply to get out of the water, so others might bathe; even though he was so small yet that a little while lying in the river had sufficed to see him clean. He had sighed and hinted that he wanted scrubbing, when all he needed to do was flatten himself a little to have the water rush over his back with no help. Rankin had at once ordered several of the convicts to oblige him, which meant they were all tired and disinclined to help when Temeraire wished to be bathed a little, too, and needed someone to carry buckets up to his back to pour the water over.

  Temeraire sighed and made the best of what Demane and Roland could do, meanwhile dabbling his nose in the deepest part of the river, and tipping his head up so the water would run down his neck. “You might wash down the eggs, too,” he added, “with a soft rag, if you please, and not very hard, only to be sure the shells are clean.”

  Lieutenant Forthing was very quick to join in this work, Temeraire noted disapprovingly, and made sure to keep close watch upon him and ensure Forthing did not try and speak to the eggs, to make them any inappropriate promises or brag of himself. “That is enough; it is clean, so you may have done,” Temeraire said, when Forthing had wiped away the dust on the larger egg, the Yellow Reaper; he was not so eager to linger while working on the very little one, at least.

  “Temeraire,” Tharkay said to him, when they had all drunk their fill, and settled for a comfortable rest in the shade, while the sun worked past its height, “do you see any signs of fire, along the river, more distantly?”

  Temeraire did not mind leaping aloft for a little while, now there was water, and hovering looked as closely as he could in either direction, so far as he could see before the river twisted out of sight around a curve, and plunged away into a canyon the other way, but there was no sign of any person at all, “and also,” he said, coming back down, “I am sorry to say, no sign of any game. I hope I have not been too ungrateful, about the kangaroos.”

  “That may make us a little uncomfortable, but it is some encouragement to me if the game has been frightened off,” Tharkay said, and turned towards the camp.

  “So you propose to erect a road alongside the river,” Rankin was saying to Laurence, “which will meander in every direction, to the certain unnecessary expense of twenty miles out of fifty, no doubt, and having been built in the midst of summer and drought will be flooded at the first rains; and this, before we have even traced it to its conclusion.”

  “Captain Rankin,” Laurence said, in that very level and restrained way which meant he was particularly angry, “if you have uncovered a more certain passage, overnight, I would be glad to hear of it. In the meantime, we are charged to build a road—”

  “We are not charged to waste our days wandering in an uncomfortable wilderness to no good purpose, sitting idly by and shepherding these men along, to we know not what end,” Rankin said. “And I have made use of a night’s reflection to better comprehend what anyone of sense,” he stressed, pointedly, “might have observed, from our flights yesterday: there is no reason why these gorges should make a passage at all, and as they evidently choose to collapse at very little provocation, even if we should find one, we could not rely on its perpetuity. We are wandering in a maze that has no exit. We had far better go up on the heights, and find a crossing along the ridges.”

  “So that every cow can be marched a thousand feet into the air, and a thousand feet down again, before they come to market,” Granby said. “Precious clever sort of route that would make.”

  The day was just as stifling and unpleasant, and they were all hungry, and inclined to argue; as they did not mean to walk any further at present, there was nothing else to do, and it was too hot even to sleep.

  “Seems to me we might stay by the water and be comfortable,” Jack Telly said, never shy of putting in his own opinion.

  “Much to no one’s surprise,” Rankin snapped. “I imagine we would see two hours’ work in a day, and the rest spent in idling and drunken stupors.”

  Temeraire, for his part, privately thought that at least the ridges, being so much higher, would be cooler and more pleasant; one might have a chance of some wind, and at least one would not be staring into these rock walls on every side: so confining. But of course, he would not say anything which might support Rankin, who did not deserve such a mark of distinction; as he had made the suggestion, it could be of no use whatsoever.

  “May I propose,” Tharkay said, “that when the sun has eased, we instead follow the course of the river to its culmination and see what advantage this route affords; we need not immediately begin construction.”

  This seemed quite sensible; but Rankin did not answer Tharkay, and indeed he turned his back, without a word, and walked away to sit with Caesar: not even the slightest inclination of his head, to acknowledge he had been spoken to, and Tharkay had not been the least bit impolite. “I do not understand what business Rankin has, behaving so rudely,” Temeraire said to Laurence afterwards, while they began to collect the baggage once again.

  “None; although I imagine he takes Tharkay’s descent for his excuse,” Laurence said, looking up the course of the river. “You are quite sure you saw no-one on the banks?” he asked. “If you should see anyone—we would be glad to speak the natives, if they were the singers last night; they might well be able to tell us if we have taken a reasonable route.”

  “No, there was no-one, but I will certainly look again when we are up,” Temeraire said, remembering belatedly the odd music; he had been so very drowsy and uncomfortable last night that it had all seemed very nearly a dream, or at least far away. “That was a very interesting kind of song; I have never heard anything like, or that language, at all. But what
ever about Tharkay’s descent can Rankin object to? After all, it is not as though he were not hatched yet, and no one knows what he might turn out be.”

  “His mother was Nepalese,” Laurence said, “and there was some irregularity about the marriage, I understand; I find Rankin is given to think a great deal of birth, and not enough of character.”

  He did not try to keep quiet: he and Granby were inclined to resent Rankin’s insult, and Temeraire did not mind joining them in the sentiment; so everyone was very stiff and formal as they packed everything up. Caesar sighed heavily, and made many reluctant noises about flying, and let his head and tail and wings drag limp towards the ground as he pushed himself up; and then Dorset went over and examined him and said, “He may fly, but he should carry no weight; you may not ride, Captain Rankin.”

  Caesar sat back on his haunches and said, “I can carry him! He is my captain,” indignantly, all signs of limp torpor gone in a flash, but Dorset was implacable, so Temeraire would have to endure carrying Rankin again, and Laurence did not look at all pleased, either.

  To add insult to injury, when Laurence quietly inquired further, Dorset said, “No, no; he is capable of carrying, perfectly capable; but he is bidding fair to develop into a malingerer, and an early lesson such as this is like to have a good effect.”

  For his part, Temeraire thought that correcting Caesar’s bad habits was so thoroughly lost a cause that it could not justify any such efforts, when they led to situations so unpleasant to other innocent parties; but Laurence did not like to contradict a surgeon. So up Rankin came again, boarding with Laurence at the very end because of his rank, and as a guest; and instead Tharkay went to fly with Iskierka, which did not suit anyone except her. Though Tharkay was not his, precisely, Temeraire had grown used enough to his company to feel a sense of some responsibility, a degree of justified interest; and Tharkay could not in the least prefer to ride upon Iskierka, who was exceedingly hot and damp in her person, and so unreliable.

  They had been working in the hot sun, so that when it dropped again below the gorge walls they were ready to take advantage of the chance, and to fly onward at once. It was not pleasant flying, despite the lack of direct sun: they had to keep close within the narrow canyon walls, uninteresting and covered with scrubby dried-out grass and shrubs gone pale as wheat.

  The river running over the rocks had a strange, steady noise; not loud enough to be called a roar, it seemed more a part of the same queer silence which seemed to envelop the gorges. It was not a sound one could listen to; it rather wished to swallow up all other noises, so Temeraire could scarcely even hear his own wings beating.

  Caesar kept insisting on flying too close, where he could keep an eye on Rankin, even though it was his own fault he was not allowed to carry his own captain, and as though anyone else would have wanted Rankin, anyway, Temeraire thought. Caesar would clip him, coming too close to the wings, and once he even fouled Temeraire’s wing-joint with the tip of one claw.

  Temeraire had been drifting a little, almost sleeping as he flew; the scratch startled him unpleasantly aware again, and conscious of his surroundings. “Ow!” he said, sharply. “That is quite enough; you will keep further off, if you cannot mind where you are putting your claws,” he added, and snapped at Caesar’s tail for warning; Caesar tipped his wings back and dodged hastily, but took the lesson and made a little more of a safe distance between them.

  Temeraire settled himself back into the tedium of long flying, but in so doing, noticed a flash of color below. “Laurence,” he said, looking over his shoulder as he paused, hovering, “I think that is a bit of broken plate, there, if I am not mistaken.”

  “Whatever is of interest in some flotsam?” Rankin said; Laurence asked Temeraire to set them down, and when Iskierka had come down also, he and Tharkay considered the fragments: it was certainly a very lovely example of Qingbai ware, broken up; a sad waste, Temeraire thought, and the smugglers had ought to have been more careful.

  They went aloft again afterwards, flying quite low, where they might be shaded from the sun. The river curved away from them upstream, into a series of gorges, and Temeraire had settled it in his own head they would be flying until nightfall, when he made the last turn and stopping abruptly nearly made Iskierka and Caesar both pile into him; they could not hover as he did.

  “What are you doing?” Iskierka demanded, and then beating up over him said, “Oh, there,” with immense satisfaction, as though she had done anything useful to bring them to this point. The river plunged on through the trees below them, but up ahead the timber petered out, and a broad field of rich green growth, very small, spread out across the floor of a wide green valley, framed but not cramped by rising mountains.

  There was a murmur of pleasure and satisfaction among all the men—“I have rarely seen such splendid farming country,” Laurence said to Temeraire, “or at least so it looks.”

  Temeraire himself was far more preoccupied with the startling evidence they had not been the first to make the crossing, after all; before him, in the field, stood a small and placid herd of cattle, their coats gone shaggy and ragged, munching upon the grass.

  “Oh! I cannot think of anything I like better than stewed beef,” Temeraire said, leaning over the cooking meat to inhale its vapours, “or at least, when it is so particularly good.” Gong Su had contrived with his assistance to cut out a little hollow of water from the river, into which a fine, fat specimen of the herd had gone along with many stones Iskierka had heated, for the dragons’ dinner; and the soup was doled out in bowlfuls to the men, to eat with their salt pork and biscuit.

  Laurence took a cup of the broth and some biscuit himself, and walked out a little distance into the valley: the earth was soft and springy beneath his feet, unmarred by rocks or stumps, and the leathery smell of the cattle as familiar to him as breathing. He might almost have been on his father’s estates again in Nottinghamshire, but for the glorious rearing escarpments of sandstone, yellow and grey and red, which framed the wide comfortable bowl of the valley floor.

  When Temeraire had eaten, they went aloft together to the heights and cleared away a little space amid the vegetation. The long, thickly forested slopes curved downward to the valley floor like wide-spread green skirts, then thinning out into grassy plains: timber and grazing land as well, and the valley stretched a considerable length, ample to any use. The river’s banks needed only to be widened a little, and the mouth of the valley cut, to allow for a most convenient road with easy supply of fresh water for driving cattle.

  “If one should put up a pavilion here,” Temeraire said, a little wistfully, “I do not think anyone could ask for a finer prospect: look at those falls over there; and all the cattle would be in view.”

  If a great deal of labor would be required to realize such a project, dragon strength could make light work of that. Temeraire might fell the timber they required, and manage the stone as they quarried it, even while the men were set to cutting the road back to Sydney, Laurence thought. And when they had finished, there would be no great difficulty to bring back more cattle along it: the valley could certainly sustain a herd of thrice the size, at least—enough to support even four dragons, if the beasts should supplement their diet with game.

  Laurence put down his glass, half-amused to discover in himself so much inclination towards this peculiar sort of domesticity, when he thought how eagerly he had fled from any such work as a boy and spurned with contempt the management of estates, or anything so quiet and unadventurous as a comfortable living; in the face of his father’s impatience and punishment both. He had never seen any honor to be won on fields such as these; now it seemed to him the cleanest place which he had seen in life.

  “The trail continues westward,” Tharkay told him, when they had returned to the valley floor, “and I am left none the wiser as to its source. It must meet the coast, somewhere, to be taking on goods from the ships; but I expected to find the path curving, or doubling back upon itself, sooner
than this.”

  “Now that you are certain the goods have come this way,” Laurence said, “might your search not be more fruitful if you sailed along the coast to examine what nearby harbors, not so distant from the trailhead, should suffice to host a merchant vessel? Or,” he added, “you might leave a sentinel over the trail, and see who will appear.”

  “No-one will appear,” Tharkay said, “now that we have come to occupy the valley with three dragons; we might as well be knights on errantry, blowing horns as we go. I expect you will be staying,” he added, half a question.

  Laurence paused. “It is certainly an ideal situation for a covert,” he said slowly, and looked at Temeraire. “Could you be happy with such a home?” he asked. “I know it can offer none of the advantages of a more improved location.”

  “Oh! as for improvements, we may make our own,” Temeraire said, “and I dare say, once the eggs are hatched, we will make a great deal of progress; particularly as these trees and stones are not anyone’s property, and we do not need to buy them before we make use of them. I must say,” he added, “while it is strange there are no dragons here, it is very convenient not to always be wondering if something you happen to look at is already someone else’s territory, and they will be upset that you have taken one of their cows.”

  He seemed as delighted with the prospect as ever he had with privateering; and later, as the sun dipped below the escarpments, and they settled to sleep, Temeraire expounded drowsily on his thoughts, adding, “We will certainly put up a splendid pavilion out of this fragrant wood, and some of this yellow rock; and Laurence, when we have done so, and increased the herd, why, I would put this territory against any in the world.

  “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.”