Page 30 of League of Dragons (Temeraire)
He spoke lightly, but Laurence knew to measure the depth of Tharkay’s feelings less by what he said, than by what he did not say, and Tharkay had not mentioned his paternal family over a dozen times in all the years of their acquaintance. It was to a mere offhand mention that Laurence owed the knowledge of their existence; and to the accident of a shipboard communication that those relations, who had taken pains to furnish Tharkay with every apparent proof of family affection until his father’s death, had since that event done everything in their power to steal his inheritance and deny his legitimacy.
They had succeeded so far to render him friendless and penniless in Britain, dependent on the kindness of an old acquaintance of his father’s in the East India Company for even the little and dangerous foreign employment he had been able to obtain, as a go-between and a guide. Only the prize-money paid him, for having recruited some twenty feral beasts out of the Pamirs to Britain’s service, had finally enabled him to press a law-suit to recover his rights; but this had dragged ever since.
“I am sorry to lose the power of disappointing your cousin’s designs,” Laurence said quietly. “I hope, Tenzing, you know that I wish I hazarded my safety equally with yours.”
“Oh, permit me to comfort you on that score,” Tharkay said. “Napoleon does not seem to me to care much for being balked. When you have gone romping around his carefully assembled guests, and done your best to overturn his remarkable conclave, I have every hope of your provoking him to all the outward displays of wrath that you might wish. You are as likely to be executed as I am.”
—
The request had been made of Aurigny, and permission came the next morning swiftly and enthusiastically: they were to have the full run of the grounds, although the Emperor regretted they must not go near the northern edge of the gardens where Temeraire and Iskierka were housed. But their escort would gently guide them away if they should accidentally stray too far in that direction, and they would dine with the Emperor and the Empress tomorrow night, an honor Laurence received unwillingly, and Granby with outright dismay.
“There is not a moment to lose: let us do our best to put him in a towering rage at once,” he said. “It won’t be too late for him to withdraw the invitation, and for my part, I had rather be in the stocks than at another such dinner table.”
Tharkay’s memory of the plan of the grounds was good enough to bring them near the Tswana, not without a little circumnavigation that Laurence could not regret, as serving to deceive their escort of six excellent and determined Grognards. He spoke with Aurigny and his companions a little as they walked the paths; they spoke of their emperor with an extreme familiarity, and cheerfully cursed the vagaries of his will that had put them on “sheepdog-duty,” as one fellow put it, and away from the front lines. “Ah, but he must let us have a little fighting sometime,” one of them named Brouilly said, a little indiscreetly, “now that the Prussians are lining up for another drubbing—I was at Austerlitz,” he added, with pardonable pride, and touching the medal in his lapel with a caressing finger.
Tharkay glanced round, when he had made another turn, and Laurence saw he had put them upon a narrow walk, between two pavilions. Beyond them was visible the carved pediment of the particularly large one where they had seen the Tswana, the day before. There remained only to find some excuse to go near enough to speak to them: Laurence regretted Temeraire’s absence all the more, for having very little command of the Tswana-language, himself, but they might contrive somehow, if there were will on both sides. Laurence had no aim of concealing from the guards what he said and did: so long as they did not drag him bodily away before he had said as much as he could, he would be satisfied.
“I must compliment the design of your pavilions,” Laurence said to Aurigny, not without an inward shading of distaste for this species of deceit. “The floors are heated, I believe? I hope there is no objection to our making an examination of some few of the buildings.”
Aurigny did not demur, and in a half-counterfeit of interest Laurence went to the nearest pavilion and made a little show of discovering the heating-stove—an invention not of French but of Chinese origin, with which he had long been familiar, although this one had certain clever modifications, which brought the deception nearer truth. Laurence would gladly have acquired plans of the system, although the thought reminded him unpleasantly that he had few prospects of making any use of such a design—heating was not much required in New South Wales, and even if he and Temeraire were ever suffered to make their home again in England, they were not likely to have the power of setting up any pavilions.
“John, will you have a look?” he said, calling Granby’s attention to the location of the heating-pipes, which carried the hot water from the low gurgling kettle and circulated it into the base of the pavilion, and thought nothing of it when the dragons sleeping within raised their heads to look over at them: two middle-weight beasts, bright sky-blue in color and of a sleek configuration not so far from Temeraire’s lines, with large but tightly furled wings and banding across the ridge of a rounded nose not unlike a snake; they had long fangs hanging over their jaws. The guards showed no concern, although perhaps for the youngest of their number,affectedno concern: his hand rested upon his pistol, and his eyes remained on the dragons instead of his prisoners.
And then one of the beasts hissed inward, a long and threatening whistle of breath, and said,“British.”
Granby, anxious over playing his part, had been bent with excessive attention to examine the pipes; he jerked his head up, took one look at the dragons, and said, “Oh, Lord, they are Bengal,” and turned reaching for Laurence even as one of the beasts brought a slashing, many-taloned claw down.
Instinct moved quicker, and the shadow of the falling blow: Laurence dived aside and took himself rolling into the brush, while Granby fell back in the opposite direction towards the path. The claws passed with tearing force between them, carrying away two of the hot-water pipes. Clouds of hot steam erupted whistling into the air, and the dragon jerked back its talons with a hiss of pain.
The guards were shouting protests and drawing their swords and pistols, but a party adequate to guard three men was not sufficient to give pause to an angry dragon. The two beasts came slithering to their full length out of the pavilion, clawing over the ground with startling speed even with their wings still folded to avoid the trees, their heads swinging to either side back and forth searchingly. The meager cover of the steam-clouds was quickly failing as the burst pipes ran dry. Laurence, getting his feet beneath him, made a crouching dash for a stand of trees—and threw himself behind it only just as the trunk groaned, spitting bark to either side of him, with a blow from the dragon’s head.
Pistol-fire was cracking loud behind him, on the path. One of the dragons had turned that way; another had come after him. She had drawn her head back, shaking off the impact against the tree, and in the brief respite, Laurence dashed for a hollow between a pair of massive boulders, artfully arranged for decorative effect to conceal one pavilion from another; fistfuls of moss tore away beneath his hands as he hauled himself into the small space. The dragon came on after him, putting her gleaming yellow eye to the crack.“British,”she hissed again, full of hatred. She wore a neck-collar of gold, very dirty, which looked also as though pieces had been broken off at different times—perhaps to sell, for her keep. She was a lean and older beast, with scales showing the broadening of age.
He ducked back deeper into his hiding-hole as the dragon tried scraping a couple of talons through the opening, nearly catching him. She clawed against the rocks in frustration, a hideous scraping noise. He might have called out to her, but he had no argument to make which he thought would have any weight with an enraged and vengeful dragon. Laurence reflected grimly that he ought to have considered that noteverydragon here would have cause to esteem him; Napoleon would surely have been as happy to recruit more dragons who shared his devoted enmity for Britain.
The boulders jarred violently: the dragon was hurling herself bodily against them. Dirt shook loose, stinging in his eyes, and both the great stones rocked back and forth, one wobbling out of its place. Another blow would shake them apart. Laurence twisted in the hollow, and squeezed himself out on the other side—and ran, with the hunted speed of any creature with death at its back, hearing the splintering branches behind him, the brute cracking of green wood, as its herald. He did not look back. The hissing breath drew close, but in the distance came the sound of more guns, and roaring: the French had summoned their own dragons to be peacemakers. He could not evade forever, but he could buy time. He twisted sharply to one side, and threw himself behind one of the larger trees; the dragon whipped to follow him, and as she clawed for the trunk he ran directly at her, instead, and passed under the arch of her forelegs. Her head doubled on herself, trying to keep sight of him, and she was forced awkwardly to twist herself around to come after him again.
He was panting, nearly out of breath. His chest ached. The dragon had made a wall of herself behind him now, and was slowing a little—which might have seemed hopeful, for a moment, and then he saw she was herding him towards the open path ahead: when he was out of the trees, he would be easy prey to spot and seize. A moment’s calculation, and then he ran, as quickly as he could, and threw himself across the path and behind the wall of a hedge on the other side.
But she had anticipated the tactic; she too leapt, a monstrous jump over the path, her wings half-opening, and landed on his far side—herding him once again, from the other direction, and she had closed in on him. Laurence had rarely felt more sympathy for a fox being run to ground: there was something terrible in feeling the quick intelligence of the hunter on his heels, a sentience without mercy. She would have him in another moment; there was only one final hope to hazard. He gulped a breath, then broke onto the path and ran once more, straight and without evading twists, for the Tswana pavilion, not far, and shouted, “Help! Help!” in their tongue.
And then the world overturned with stunning force. Laurence had a brief peculiar impression of light shining directly through his skull, accompanied by a clamor of bells.Eight bells,he thought distantly, his whole body overcome by a heavy numbing languor. The dragon’s head was lowering towards him, teeth bared; she had knocked him down with a claw, and two talons pinned him like a butterfly to either side of his chest. She peered at him. He was conscious of no pain, but he could not move. Evidently satisfied he was stunned beyond escape, she lifted away her head, and raised her claw for the final blow.
Still in that paralyzing stupor, Laurence saw very clearly as she was bowled over and away from him: a much larger dragon in mottled orange and grey knocked her away and put a protective cage of talons over him. She coiled back up to her feet, and drawing up her shoulders unfurled a large frilled flap which extended above and below her head, patterned peacock-bright in blue and green and violets, and hissing bared her long and vicious fangs. One of these was a little broken at the tip, and a touch of greenish ichor dripped from it.
The Tswana beast, not unimpressed, made a low rumbling comment—Laurence did not entirely follow the meaning, but felt it something vaguely profane and uneasy. But dust was rising from the path, and in a moment two more of the Tswana dragons had landed next to their companion: their massed weight made the blue dragon draw back, and after a moment the frill smoothed itself back down. She hissed at them all again, and slowly backed away down the path, retreating without ever taking her eyes away, until she rounded her own pavilion and was gone from view, the last curve of her tail vanishing.
Laurence found he was trembling in all his parts, in some belated reaction, and a moment later sensation returned: his heart was pounding with violent speed, and he put a hand over his chest involuntarily, imagining he would feel the beat palpable against his fingers. A few deep breaths restored him to something more like equilibrium, and then the sheltering talons came away. He pushed himself up sitting, and turning found himself under contemplation by five dragons, and some ten men wearing the gold jewellery and fur cloaks common to the highest ranks of the Tswana warriors—although their spears had been exchanged for rifles slung over their backs, adorned with exceptionally long bayonets.
—
“We have a little while to sit and talk, I think,” Moshueshue said, in quite excellent French, pouring him a cup of red-brown tea. “The excitement is not quite over, it seems, and they will be some time determining that you have not been scattered over the grounds in pieces. I was most interested to find you a guest here, Captain Laurence. I had not expected you.”
Laurence lowered the cup, for which he was grateful: a hot and pleasant brew, with nothing bitter about it, even if it were not very strong. He had as yet said nothing to explain his situation, but Moshueshue evidently already suspected certain aspects. “Sir, you are right to be surprised; I am not a guest, but a prisoner.” He outlined in a few more words the circumstances which had brought him and Temeraire, while Moshueshue listened without comment, and then added, “I would be grateful to know more of the purpose of this convocation, and to what end my name has been used.”
Moshueshue did not answer immediately, but sat with a thoughtful and inward-turned expression, which showed nothing of hot emotion. One of the dragons, growing impatient more quickly, spoke to demand an explanation. The prince glanced up, and after a considering moment answered briefly: Laurence understoodeggandthief,and was a little startled to see the dragons all draw back their heads with a united hiss of distaste.
“Egg-stealing is a serious matter with us, Captain,” Moshueshue said, seeing his surprise, and Laurence realized that it would of course be regarded as nearly the theft of a soul: since the Tswana believed their dragons their own great reborn, and made the belief true by regularly inculcating each egg with the history of the dead while the dragonet formed within, they would object violently to anyone taking an egg from the family and friends who were responsible for conveying that history.
