Page 31 of League of Dragons (Temeraire)
“Then you can well understand the motive which brought us here, despite all other interest,” Laurence said, “and I hope would not see the practice rewarded.”
Moshueshue smiled very briefly, as if acknowledging a point neatly scored, but he did not pass his words on to the dragons. He was not a man easily read, or easily led; and few, Laurence supposed, better understood how to manage dragons, as he must to have any influence over beasts who considered themselves not only his protectors but his elders.
“I understand the French have suffered a reversal lately, in the east,” Moshueshue said, an invitation Laurence was glad to accept, by furnishing him with the details of Napoleon’s disastrous Russian campaign.
“There will be an army at his gates by the spring, I confidently expect,” Laurence finished, silently grateful to the cheerful young Imperial Guardsman who had informed him that the Prussians had joined the alliance, “and perhaps you know something already of the situation he faces in the south, in Spain.”
He knew well that he was making an argument. Moshueshue regarded him all the while with a thoughtful expression, and then abruptly nodding said, “Napoleon has proposed an alliance,” answering the question Laurence had not yet asked, but wished to. “Not, as you might suppose, a military one. He desires rather that we should draw up borders among ourselves, among dragons, and he has proposed as well a code of laws, which should govern among us and resolve those disputes which arise over territory. It is a sensible code: its principles are good, and there is much to like in it,” which Laurence, a little dismally, could well imagine.
“But it recommends itself to my people mostly,” Moshueshue added dryly, “by seeking our opinions on how the world is to be divided. We find you Ropeans are inclined to consult no one but yourselves on these little matters, and decide from the other side of the world how best to divide up a country in which you do not live.”
He beckoned to one of his servants, a young boy who ran and brought them the proposal. Looking over the maps therein, Laurence was astonished—although he knew he ought not have been, by any Napoleonic effrontery—to find all Europe and even Russia made into a French province, and from the air divided neatly into territories belonging to various feral dragons who should all owe allegiance to Napoleon direct. Even in England the French flag stood over a quilt of small patched territories. Laurence wondered at it, seeing one markedYELLOW REAPERS,as though Napoleon hoped to acquire the allegiance of the entire breed, and across Scotland a collection of wholly unfamiliar and peculiar names—RICARLEE, VINLOP, SHAL—whose meaning he could not divine. He wished not for the first time that Temeraire were at hand, to be consulted; he could only guess that these were each the name of some particular dragon, like Arkady, who had established himself as chief of a company of feral beasts.
All Africa below the Sahara had been made over to the Tswana, and Brazil marked out for them as well, abutting the Incan Empire’s holdings in the west. Indeed Laurence could see nothing for Moshueshue to complain of in the arrangements, if they had been at all enforceable, with no other European power in a position to quarrel with them.
“Sir, I can tell you that he has no power to assign any of these lands, though he may claim to,” Laurence said to Moshueshue, who shrugged a little.
“Had you the power to assign Cape Town to yourselves, or the Portuguese to claim Louanda? You claimed those places, and acted upon your claims; you took slaves and established your fortifications and your farms, and you would be there yet, if we had not driven you away by force. All maps are fiction when the world is seen from the sky. But if ten thousand dragons choose to believe in this one, I think you will find it nearer truth than otherwise.”
Laurence looked at those neat lines, which divided the fields of Scotland among a dozen feral bands—who should, he found, reading into theCode Napoléon Draconique, be entitled to take a certain amount of cattle in their territory, and to call upon one another for aid if their claims met resistance—and he began to understand. He knew well the jealousy of dragons, over anything they considered their own possessions and their own territory in particular, even if very lately acquired, or by dubious means or even outright stolen. Napoleon meant to put all that possessive spirit to his own service: by telling the dragons they were entitled to these rights, he would make them willing to defend them, and by providing them with a network of alliances would enable them to do so—if not forever, then certainly for long enough to be a powerful distraction to the human nations whose borders they occupied.
It was his stratagem in Russia refined and writ large: he would make all the ferals of Europe into enemies of the very governments who presently fed them in the breeding grounds or ignored their small depredations. That most of those ferals would be slaughtered in reprisal, or starve in the ensuing chaos, he would ignore, save when convenient for him to come to the aid of one or another band, as an excuse for making still more war upon his neighbors.
Laurence looked up from the sheaf of papers. “And would you lendyouraid, to a feral band in Britain, seeking to seize lands not their own?”
“Where would you prefer to see war made, Captain Laurence?” Moshueshue asked softly. “In your country, or on the other side of the sea?”
“War has a habit of spreading, sir,” Laurence said. “I would prefer to see peace.”
—
Temeraire settled back down uneasily. “Well, it all seems to have gone quiet again,” he said to Iskierka, “only I cannot see what any of them were about, except some sort of quarreling—it does not seem to have gone near the house, or near the egg, so I suppose it can have done no real harm.”
He felt unconvinced by his own words: he did not at all like the sound of gunshots so near-by, and such a squabbling of dragons. He had seen five all together go skirmishing aloft; a bright blue dragon fighting three and finally four of the French middle-weights, until they had harried him back to the ground. Temeraire had not recognized the breed at all, and so knew nothing of his allegiance, but what should any dragon be doing here, if not a friend of France, and if a friend, why starting up such an enormous fuss?—and why putting on so disheartening a display? The French dragons had brought him down so very skillfully, even though he had been quite large and old and impressively scarred. Temeraire had not liked observing it at all. As dreadful as it must be to think of leaving Laurence behind in captivity, to save the egg, it was far worse to think of being captured in the attempt to do so—the egg taken awayagain,and locked up this time somewhere in secret, so there would be no second chance.
“You will insist on making trouble as though we hadn’t enough,” Iskierka said, eating her cow with unconcern bordering, in Temeraire’s opinion, on a complete lack of sensibility. “So what if they are quarreling among themselves? If you ask me, this is as good a chance for us as anything. We had much better stop worrying and just go at once, while they are busy with the nonsense over there.”
“Why,” Temeraire said, beginning to explain why this was a singularly bad idea, as Iskierka’s always were, and then discovered he could not find a satisfactory argument against it. He struggled a moment longer, then said, “Oh, very well, then,” and gulped the last hindquarter of beef out of his own bowl—they had complained falsely of hunger, and asked for beef in the British tradition. Temeraire had felt a bit guilty at putting their guards to such trouble, but they could not be sure of getting anything much to eat between here and Dover. He and Iskierka had settled it between them they should make for the covert there.
The bowls were clean; they had drunk deeply from the fountain. The evening was fast approaching: the lights of the house shone golden against the blue night. Laurence was there now, perhaps, Temeraire thought miserably—safe and well, his health improved and all consideration taken for his comfort—and by this evening, when their flight was known, he would surely be taken from there, hurled into a cold dank prison cell, made wretched and ill—
“Let us go at once,” Temeraire said, before courage and resolution failed him.
“Very well, but if anything should happen to Granby, I will never forgive you,” Iskierka said, adding not a little to his unhappiness.
“Be quiet, and start that fire going,” Temeraire said resentfully. He rose up on his haunches and spread out his wings, making as large a screen of himself as he could manage. They had surreptitiously scraped together a heap of old branches and leaves into the back corner of their pavilion over the course of the day; Iskierka put her head low to them and blew a narrow line of flame upon the pile until it had fairly caught, and the fire began to lick up the columns of the pavilion. In a moment, the roof was blooming with small flames, surprising Temeraire by a wholly unaccustomed feeling of deep terror, which sent him jerking out of the pavilion with a gasp of dismay.
Iskierka followed him out, snorting. “Whatever is it? What if they look over and see us too soon?”
“The fire is far enough along,” Temeraire said, striving to sound calm and sensible, and to be so as well; when really he wanted only to be gone, aloft and away from the flames. He shook out his wings and looked them over, covertly—surely some embers had caught upon them? There was no sign of so much as a spark, but as soon as he turned away he felt the small stinging sensation of prickling heat upon the membranes. He looked again: there was still nothing there.
“Come on, then,” Iskierka said, and there was no help for it: he reared up with her and together they fanned the flames energetically with their wings, until it climbed rapidly into a towering pillar, crackling and roaring as the roof went up. Temeraire managed to remain in place, but he was grateful when the cries of alarm rose behind them and he and Iskierka went aloft at last, circling away, the blazing flames making them invisible against the night to their guards.
The pavilion of the egg was not far, and Iskierka had been right, after all: half the guardians were absent, and evidently had gone to help with the squabbling on the other side of the grounds. Five remained, alert and peering into the night, but Temeraire roared furiously as he and Iskierka descended, at the stand of elegant trees bordering the clearing. As the divine wind shattered their branches into splinters, Iskierka blew a sheet of flame over the fragments, so they caught and rained down upon the guards like a hail of fire, piercing and scorching all at once.
Cries of pain reproached Temeraire; many of the dragons covered their eyes and folded in their own wings; he shuddered with sympathetic agony. But the attack served its purpose. Together, he and Iskierka seized the edges of the roof and tore it away, and he snatched up the egg and all its nest together into his talons—carefully, so carefully—
Immense relief washed over him the instant he had it safe. “I have it!” he cried, “I have it!” and Iskierka flung her head back and swathed the air over their heads with flame, snaking her head back and forth all the while she breathed out her fire, leaving a streak of violet-green dazzle upon the night sky. Temeraire was beating up as quickly as he could—up and through a wall of hot air, but as soon as he got his wings cupped over it, he began to rise swiftly, and Iskierka was on his heels.
