Tongues of Serpents: A Novel of Temeraire

by Naomi Novik

  The adoption had made a useful and face-saving diplomatic fiction at the time of its promotion, on both British and Chinese sides; to use it for personal gain in the present circumstances felt to Laurence at once dishonest and wretchedly embarrassing. Now these men could not fail to perform any of the formal obeisance which their court etiquette demanded—however visibly, however plainly inappropriate when directed at Laurence—without showing disrespect to their own Emperor, a crime punishable by death.

  The ritual had for audience Galandoo and several other of the native men, who looked on with interest. What structures of a permanent sort stood upon the shore all looked to be of the Chinese style, amongst which however the peripatetic natives seemed to be entirely comfortable: there were several younger men, hunters, bringing in game to cooking-pits; and women could be seen working in the enormous courtyard of the pavilion, and also peering down with interest at the ceremony.

  If the Chinese gentlemen found the act objectionable, they concealed their feelings, and having risen from the sand invited them into the pavilion, where Laurence halted on the threshold, dismayed: a Yellow Reaper, perhaps a week old, was sleeping comfortably on the stone beside a small fountain, and there were several native women sitting beside it and working with some rocks.

  “Oh, here you are,” the dragonet said, lifting its head, and turning said something to one of the women in what sounded like their tongue. “I am Tharunka,” the dragonet added, and a little critically, “you have been quite a long time coming after me.”

  “So long as you are hatched, I do not see you have anything to complain of,” Temeraire said, having put his head inside the pavilion. “Who are these people, and what did they mean by taking you, I would like to know?”

  “These are the Larrakia,” the dragonet said, “who had me from the Pitjantjatjara, who had me from the Wiradjuri; and pray do not be angry, for they needed me quite badly. You see, we are sending goods so far that all the directions are in different languages for all the different tribes, and of course all of you in Sydney, and there is no one who can speak to all of them; but now I can, as I have heard them all in the shell,” she finished, with some complacency, “and I am learning Chinese, too, as much as I can; and they have given me a great many jewels.”

  “Where?” Iskierka instantly demanded, and Tharunka nosed over a large basket, filled near to the brim with glowing, burnished opals, and the women working around her were polishing still more.

  “I do not see much use in just a basket of jewels,” Temeraire said later, in private, drinking a bowl of light fragrant tea prescribed for its cooling properties. “If one had them strung, on gold wire perhaps, there might be something to admire; one cannot wear a basket. At least, not without looking silly.”

  “Well, I want some,” Iskierka said. “I like the way they shine, the dark ones. Granby, I am sorry we did not bring more gold with us; do you think there are any prizes we might take, hereabouts?”

  Granby very emphatically did not.

  The chief of the outpost was Jia Zhen, a gentleman of perhaps thirty years of age, young for so isolated a position of responsibility, and full of energy; he had presented to them with earnest satisfaction all the details of the pavilion, established for the comfort of dragon visitors, and beside it across the courtyard stood a large and comfortable house in the Chinese style, offering an excellent prospect upon the harbor.

  Laurence disliked extremely feeling inadequate to his social occasions, and all the more so that the Chinese might have expected him, by the grace of his rank, to be more versed than he was; but the courtesies had baffled him in his short stay at the Imperial court, and he had not improved in the intervening time. He did not know how to tactfully inquire after their purpose in being here, nor how far that purpose went: did they think to establish a colony of their own? It did not seem very probable—the Chinese did not have anything like a merchant marine; the little junk in the harbor looked to him a wallowing death-trap, and he was astonished they should have survived the journey: a matter of sheerest luck.

  “I suppose you could not have been very comfortable: it must be two thousand miles of ocean and more,” Laurence said to Jia, doubtfully.

  “The journey was tiresome, of course,” Jia agreed, “two weeks nearly without land! But one must endure,” which became comprehensible to them that afternoon, watching as the great-winged dragon came in landing before the pavilion, and yawned hugely before dipping her head to the courtyard’s fountain to drink.

  “They cannot colonize very well by dragon, at least,” Laurence said, after a dismayed silence: two weeks to China! He did not suppose one could make it in under two months by sea, even if the monsoon were cooperating.

  “No,” Granby said judiciously, peering down at the beast, “she’s prodigious, but it is all in the wings now I see her closer; I don’t think she could carry more than a ton and go anywhere.”

  “Which I am afraid begs the question,” Tharkay said, “where several tons a week of smuggled goods are coming from into Sydney, unless they have an army of these beasts,” but this theory Temeraire was able to discount, though scarcely with less disquieting news: the dragon, Lung Shen Li, was one of barely four beasts extant, of a wholly new breed.

  “The crown prince gave orders they should be bred,” Temeraire explained, “to travel long distances: she says it took them almost three years to manage, and she is still the only one who can conveniently fly so far: her year-mates cannot stay in the air longer than two or three days at a time.”

  “In three years?” Granby said, watching covetously: the dragon was stretching herself out in the sun, the massive wings glowing amber with a fine branching tracework of darker veins and tendons. “It can’t have been done; it is twenty, at the least, to work out a halfway sort of new breed, if you don’t mind it being half-blind when you are done.”

  “Oh; it is not that they did not know how,” Temeraire said. “She says that her kind were bred by the Ming, before, and there is a record of the matings.”

  “Then why the devil shouldn’t they have done it before?” Granby said.

  “Because,” Laurence said slowly, realizing, “they did not wish to; or more to the point, the conservative faction would not allow it. —This is the consequence of Prince Yongxing’s death.”

  They were silent, considering the implications for Britain’s empire—China choosing to reach beyond, and with the means to do so. “Do you suppose we will have to quarrel with them, over the place?” Granby said dubiously. “I don’t know how much of the country we have claimed; or where we are, for that matter.”

  Laurence laid out the maps on the floor of their chamber, but they were uncertain enough of their position to make the determination more than a little troublesome. “I think we are somewhere near One Hundred Thirty East,” he said finally, “which would put us outside the border: Cook’s claim begins at One Thirty-five. The Dutch might have something, of course; although I cannot recall.”

  “Well, the politics of it all are past me,” Granby said, “but someone in Whitehall will want to know this; and I dare say they would like to know it quicker than eleven months from now, too.”

  There was more they would like to know, also: Tharkay slipped out, that evening, and returning could report that the dockyards were not so simple as they appeared: there were pulley wheels upon the jetty, and along the shore paving-stones had been laid down in clean lines marking out a road, very broad, in the Chinese style, to accommodate dragons. “With two foundations marked along it,” he said, “I imagine for warehouses; or barracks if you care to be pessimistic.”

  Laurence could not but be grateful for their presence, whatever the larger political questions: there was a physician of some skill among them for the benefit of Lung Shen Li, out of caution for any possible complication which might threaten the health of a new breed, and he had with great courtesy discussed Temeraire’s condition with Dorset, and suggested a course of treatment which their supp
ly had further made possible; and besides this, Jia had with great generosity flung wide their stores, and Gong Su had applied himself with great energy: Temeraire had eaten better in one week than in the past two months, and already seemed to Laurence much improved.

  There was food enough to meet even Kulingile’s appetite, which they saw properly satisfied for the first time at last when he had eaten a heap of fresh-caught fish nearly the full size of his body; and in a smaller and more personal vein, there was something near paradise in finding after so long and grinding a journey, so civilized and gracious a welcome, familiar even if foreign.

  But this same gratitude could not but make Laurence all the more sensible of the very real danger of conflict which this outpost represented. It was not merely the presence of the Chinese, or their cooperation with the native Larrakia: two days after their arrival, several Macassan praus appeared in the harbor, come to harvest trepang. Shortly their small flotilla of canoes were plying the coast, Malay divers plunging from their sides over and over, and in the evening bringing in their haul to be counted up and prepared: enormous vats of boiling sea-water stood on bonfires, and after boiling the trepang were hauled out and laid upon frames in huge dark ranks for drying in the intense heat of the sun.

  Apart from this freshly gathered haul, the divers brought up also from time to time pearls; to these the native tribesmen had the supply of opals and heaps of dried spices, to exchange for Chinese goods. The market which was forming among them might be small only for being so new, and for the limitations of the harbor, but it was taking shape with remarkable speed.

  Jia had set aside all the southern wing of the building for their use and comfort; it was not adequate to the full size of their party, but the lower officers and the convicts put up light tents upon the ground behind the building, as yet undeveloped, and so filled out their shelter. The building was in a light, unfamiliar style well suited to the humid and tropical climate, allowing the winds to bring coolness through the thin walls.

  The men were certainly in no great hurry to leave: four had fallen sick, and Laurence felt himself strangely enervated, the natural urgency of so extraordinary a discovery deadened by fatigue and by the peculiar and isolated circumstances: their return journey would devour another two months almost certainly, and then whatever intelligence they might send would require six more at the least to reach any authority who might act. A full day’s idleness seemed without meaning, when matched against such stretches of dead time, and almost difficult to avoid when so abruptly they had been relieved of the necessity or even the opportunity to fend for their own care; one after another unspooled into a week, and when they had only begun to settle it, that they must shortly depart, Jia interrupted their plans by visiting to invite them formally to a banquet, to be held at the night of the new moon, a week hence.

  The invitation could not be refused, after so much generosity on the part of their hosts, and so much slothfulness on their own: to suddenly find it necessary to leave at once could only be, it seemed to Laurence, the height of rudeness. “I scarcely see how it can be more suitable to attend some barbaric feast,” Rankin said, “given by encroaching agents of a foreign power likely soon to be at odds with our Government, and undermining our trade; but certainly we will wait if you insist upon it,” he finished, with cool sarcasm, “and a pretty figure I am sure you will cut on the occasion.”

  “We are pretty ragged,” Granby said, “but I suppose that is better than behaving like a rudesby; I don’t see you saying no when they are offering you dinner, and bringing a tunny for your beast.”

  “At the least,” Laurence said to Temeraire afterwards, privately, “the intimacy of such an occasion may prove an opportunity to broach the subject of their position here—the awkwardness such a situation must produce between our nations—”

  “I do not at all see why,” Temeraire said. “We have come so dreadfully far, Laurence; whatever can it matter to anyone in Sydney that the Chinese are here? And it must be very pleasant for us,” he added, “to at least have the opportunity of visiting, if we like to make the journey; and Mr. Jia has already very kindly informed me that if I should like to send letters, he feels it quite his office to send them express. He sees no reason that Lung Shen Li should not visit us even in Sydney to deliver them, when that should be convenient. I have shown her our valley, on the map; she does not think it would be more than a week out of her way, flying from Uluru, so she can manage it now and again.”

  “Uluru?” Laurence asked.

  “The great rock,” Temeraire said, “where we saw her: that is where they deliver goods to the Pitjantjatjara, who have been sending them onwards to the other tribes; it is easy to make out from aloft. I suppose she might also bring some goods to Sydney herself,” he added, quite the opposite sort of encouragement which the British Government should have liked.

  Laurence was determined to make some attempt, however: this outpost was new enough, and the market yet so small, that it might not be an entrenched enterprise; some agreement might be found, some compromise, if he could understand better the purpose of the settlement, and it occurred to him in a dawning hope, that if Jia would forward letters, he might send one also to Arthur Hammond, the envoy established in Peking, who had negotiated the treaty which had left Temeraire in British hands and secured them certain advantages in the single open port of Canton.

  “If we could not rely on the letter’s remaining secure and unread,” Laurence said, “at least it would not take the better part of a year to arrive; and I suppose I would trust Hammond’s sense of the situation better than ours.”

  “Better than Whitehall’s, also,” Granby said, and looked at Tharkay, “unless you know more of that than we do?”

  Tharkay shrugged noncommittally.

  Laurence struggled to form some plan of attack, some approach not hideously clumsy in execution, and to further complicate the matter, he would have to rely on Temeraire to translate as his own Chinese was a limited mess and half-forgotten. The occasion could only be uncomfortable; it must seem in some sense almost a threat, or at least interference. Laurence thought it nearly certain he should give offense, and to gentlemen who could not resent it, very nearly the worst solecism he could imagine for his own part; but he had in some sense an obligation to both parties, which demanded the effort of reconciliation: however inadequate he might be to the task, he and Temeraire at least were present, and there was no better interlocutor to be had.

  Certainly the Government would likely wish to challenge the encroachment on Britain’s trade, if not the mere existence of what might be termed a colony, although the Chinese seemed less particularly interested in peopling the territory than in forming relations with the native tribesmen, and profiting by the extension of their trade. China’s strength was in her aerial forces, but one light-weight dragon, or even four, if all the other of Lung Shen Li’s breed were brought hence, could not withstand the full force of a British naval expedition, nor modern weaponry, if brought to bear against them.

  But all concerns Laurence might have had and all his planning were by the next morning overturned: on the tide, a small fleet of vessels began to come into the harbor: more of the Macassan praus armed with their narrow sleek canoes, but these bringing in great heaps of ripe tropical fruit and carved wooden vessels to be carefully unloaded onto the shore and added to the other stores already under shelter. Several seeming officers of this company were met with some ceremony upon the shore, and invited into the other quarters of the house: and Laurence realized belatedly that the dinner would not be a private event, as Gong Su came and asked if he might offer his assistance with the burgeoning preparations.

  Jia was now quite unavailable for any private conference, either, consumed with attentions to his rapidly increasing number of guests: the next morning, Laurence woke and saw in the harbor a launch rowing to the jetty, from a neat little merchant sloop of six guns, an American; and a Dutch vessel came in on the next tide, in the evening.<
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  “The flow of goods to Sydney begins to look incidental,” Tharkay observed: by the evening of the dinner, a Portuguese barque had joined the increasing throng, and without wishing to play the spy, Laurence had seen some dozen small and heavy chests brought onto shore, carefully, and set into the dragon pavilion under guard: almost certainly coinage, and in enough quantity judging by the size to pay for holds full of silk and porcelain and tea; where these goods were to come from, however, Laurence did not see.

  “I cannot see why they should not be delivering them by air,” Temeraire said, a little absently; he felt anyone might have been distracted, with chests quite full of gold and silver only sitting there in the corner of the building, and such splendid smells as were rising from the cooking vats upon the shore. Oh! the smell of roasted sesame; and the women were hulling exquisitely ripe longan fruits directly inside the pavilion, and heaping them into enormous bowls: the greatest self-restraint was called for, and Temeraire was not sure if he could have managed it, but for the coming occasion.

  “But I will ask Shen Li,” he added, “when she comes back again, although Laurence, I will tell you privately, I was quite right: there is something very peculiar about her, and I am sure it is all these long stretches aloft. She is perfectly pleasant, no-one could ever complain of her; but unless one speaks to her she will only sit quite still without saying a word, for hours and hours, and if one should ask what she is thinking, she says she is trying to stop thinking.”

  The magnificence of the coming dinner did make Temeraire feel a little awkward and anxious. He was privately conscious he did not look his best himself, as he had grown a little thin over their journey, and all the sea-bathing in the world had not yet sufficed to clear all the red dust from his hide; his scales were not quite so glossy as he might have liked, and he was sadly conscious that the edges of his wings were ragged. His breastplate had collected several scratches and dents, which Mr. Fellowes with all the will in the world had not quite been able to correct—Temeraire sadly missed having a proper blacksmith.