Black Powder War (13 page)

"We will teach you how we deal with invaders here; we will slaughter you as the thieves have slaughtered the Sultan's cattle, and leave your bodies to rot," he finished, making wild flourishes to the Turkish dragons.

"I will not let you hurt Laurence or my crew at all," Temeraire said hotly, and his chest swelled out with gathering breath; the Turkish dragons all looked deeply anxious. Laurence had before noted that other dragons seemed to know to fear Temeraire's roar, even if they had not yet felt the true divine wind, some instinct warning them of the danger. But their riders did not share that understanding, and Laurence did not think the dragons would refuse orders to attack; even should Temeraire prove able to singly defeat a force of half-a-dozen dragons, they could win only a Pyrrhic victory thereby.

"Enough, Temeraire; stand down," Laurence said; to Ertegun he said, stiffly, "Sir, the wild dragons I have already made plain to you were not under my command, and I have promised to make good your losses. I do not suppose you seriously propose to offer an act of war against Britain without the approval of your government; we will certainly offer no such hostility ourselves."

Tharkay unexpectedly translated this into Turkish, though Laurence had muddled through it in French, and spoke loudly enough that the other Turkish aviators might overhear; they looked uneasily at one another, and Ertegun threw him an ugly look, full of savage frustration. He spat, "Remain, and you will learn otherwise to your peril," and flung himself back towards his dragon, shouting orders; the whole flight together backed away some little distance and settled themselves in the shade of a small grove of fruit-trees bordering upon the road leading to the city, which they disposed themselves across; and the smallest of them leapt aloft and flew away towards the city at an energetic pace; shortly he grew too small to see, and vanished against the haze.

"And carrying no good news of us, to be sure," Granby said, watching his progress through Laurence's glass.

"Not without cause," Laurence said grimly.

Temeraire scratched at the ground, with a guilty air. "They were not very friendly," he said, defensively.

There was very little shelter to be had, without retreating a great distance away out of sight of the guard-dragons, which Laurence did not mean to do; but they found a place between two low hillocks and pitched a little canvas on poles stuck into the dirt, to give the sick men a piece of shade. "It is a pity they took all the cows," Temeraire said, wistfully, looking after the vanished ferals.

"A little patience would have seen them fed and you also, as guests instead of as thieves," Laurence said, his own sorely tried. Temeraire did not protest the reproof, but only hung his head, and Laurence stood up and walked some distance away under the excuse of looking again towards the city through his glass: no change, except now some herdsmen were driving cattle towards the encamped Turkish dragons, so they might eat; and the men were taking refreshment also. He put down the glass and turned from the scene. His own mouth was dry and crack-lipped; he had given his water ration to Dunne, who could hardly stop coughing. It was already grown too late to forage; but in the morning, he would have to send some of the men to hunt and find water, at great risk to themselves in strange country, where they could answer no challenge; and he had no clear idea what they might do next, if the Turks remained obdurate.

"Ought we not go round the city and try it again, from the European side?" Granby suggested, as Laurence came back to their makeshift camp.

"There are look-outs posted upon the hills to the north, against invasion from Russia," Tharkay said briefly. "Unless you mean to travel an hour out of the way, you will rouse all the city."

"Sir, someone is coming," Digby said, pointing, and the debate was moot: a courier-dragon was coming quickly from the city, with an escort of two heavy-weight beasts; and though the lowering sun was full on them, blotting out their colors, Laurence saw clearly silhouetted against the sky the two great horns thrust up from their foreheads, the narrower spikes like thorns bristling along the twisting serpentine lengths of their bodies: he had seen a Kazilik once before thus, framed against the billowing tower of smoke and flame rising from the Orient, at the Nile, as the dragon set her magazine alight and burnt the great thousand-man ship to the waterline.

"Get all the sick aboard, and unload all the powder and the bombs," he said, grimly; a scorching Temeraire could survive, if he could not evade, but even a small unlucky lick of flame might set off the store of gunpowder and incendiaries packed into his belly-rigging, with as deadly result for him as for that ill-fated French flagship.

They worked double-quick, leaving the round bombs heaped in small pyramids upon the ground, while Keynes strapped the sickest men down to boards to be secured into the belly-rigging; canvas and cloth were flung down billowing, and the spare leather also. "I can make a polite noise, Laurence; do you go aboard, until we know what they mean," Granby suggested; to Laurence's impatient refusal. The rest of the men Laurence sent aboard, however, so that only he and Granby remained on foot, well in reach of Temeraire.

The Kazilik pair landed together a short distance away, their scarlet hides vivid with markings of black-edged green, like leopard-spots, and licking at the air with their long black tongues; so close that Laurence could hear emanating from their bodies a low, faint rumbling something like the purr of a cat and the hiss of a kettle combined, and see even against the still-light sky the thin lines of steam which wisped upwards and away from the narrow spikes along the ridges of their back.

Captain Ertegun came towards them again, eyes narrowed and dark with satisfaction; from the courier dismounted two black slaves, who with great care assisted another man to descend smoothly from the dragon's shoulders; grasping their hands he stepped down onto a small folding set of steps, which they laid upon the ground. He wore a gorgeously appointed kaftan embroidered in silks of many colors, and a white many-plumed turban concealing his hair; Ertegun bowed low before him, and presented him to Laurence as Hasan Mustafa Pasha; the last a title rather than surname, Laurence vaguely recalled, and a senior rank among the vezirs.

This at least was better than an immediate assault, and when the introductions had been coldly concluded by Ertegun, Laurence began awkwardly, "Sir, I hope you will permit me to express my apologies-"

"No, no! Enough, come, let us hear no more of this," Mustafa said, his French a great deal more fluent and voluble than Laurence's, and easily overrunning his stumbling tongue; and reaching out the vezir grasped Laurence's hand in his own, with enthusiasm. While Ertegun, outraged, stared and colored to his cheekbones, Mustafa waved away all further apology and explanation, and said, "It is only unfortunate that you should have been taken in by those wretched creatures; but then it is as the imams have said, that the dragon born in the wild does not know the Prophet, and is as a servant of the Devil."

Temeraire bridled at this, snorting, but Laurence was in no mood to quarrel, full of relief. "You are more than generous, sir; and you may well believe me grateful for it," he said. "It is paltry in me to be asking your hospitality, having so abused it already-"

"Ah, no!" Mustafa said, dismissing this as of no moment. "Of course you are very welcome, Captain; you have come a long way. You will follow us to the city: the Sultan, peace be upon him, has already commanded from his generosity that you shall be housed in the palace. We have made quarters ready for you, and a cool garden for your dragon; you will rest and refresh yourselves after your journey, and we will think no more of this unhappy misunderstanding."

"I confess your suggestion is by far more appealing than the demands of my duty," Laurence said. "We would indeed be thankful for some little refreshment, whatever you can provide, but we cannot linger in port, as it were, and must soonest be on our way again: we have come to collect the dragon eggs, as has been arranged, and we must straightaway get them to England."

Mustafa's smile wavered, for a moment, and his hands still clasping Laurence's between them tightened. "Why, Captain, surely you have not come so far for nothing?" he cried. "You must know we cannot give you the eggs."

Part Two

Chapter 6

THE SMALL IVORY fountain, many-jetted, flung off a fine cooling mist that gathered upon the orange-tree leaves and fruit hanging low over the pool, ripe and fragrant and trembling. In the vast palatial gardens below the terrace railing, Temeraire lay sun-dappled and drowsy after his substantial meal, and the little runners, having cleaned him off, were sleeping tucked against his side. The chamber itself was fairytale-lovely, tiles of lapis-blue and white laid upon the walls from floor to gilt-painted ceiling, shutters inlaid with mother-of-pearl, velvet-cushioned window seats, thick carpets in a thousand shades of red heaped over the floors, and in the center of the room a tall painted vase half the height of a man stood upon a low table, full of a profusion of flowers and vines. Laurence could gladly have hurled it across the room.

"It is the outside of enough," Granby said, blazing away as he paced. "Fobbing us off with a pack of excuses, and then to heap on such vile insinuations, and as good as call this poor wretch Yarmouth a thief-"

Mustafa had been full of apology, of regret: the agreements had never been signed, he explained, fresh concerns having arisen to delay the matter; and as a consequence the payment had not yet been delivered when the ambassador had met with his accident. When Laurence had received these excuses with all the suspicion the circumstances commanded, and demanded at once to be taken to the ambassador's residence and to speak with his staff, Mustafa had with an air of faint discomfort confided that upon the ambassador's death, his servants had departed post-haste for Vienna, and one, his secretary James Yarmouth, had vanished entirely.

"I will not say I know any evil of him, but gold is the great tempter," Mustafa had said, spreading his hands wide, his implications plain. "I am sorry, Captain, but you must understand we cannot bear the responsibility."

"I do not believe a word of it; not a word," Granby went on, furiously, "the notion they would send to us, in China, to come here with an agreement only half-made-"

"No, it is absurd," Laurence agreed. "Lenton would have spoken quite differently in his orders, had the arrangement been uncertain in the least; they can only want to renege upon it, with as little embarrassment to themselves as possible."

Mustafa had smiled and smiled relentlessly in the face of all Laurence's objections, and repeated his apologies, and offered hospitality once again; with all the crewmen weary and thick with dust, and no alternative to hand, Laurence had accepted, supposing besides that they would only find it easier to work out the truth of the affair, and exert some influence to see matters set right, once ensconced in the city.

He and his crew had been settled into two elaborate kiosques upon the inner grounds, the buildings nestled amidst rich lawns vast enough for Temeraire to sleep in. The palace crowned the narrow spur of land where the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn together met the sea, and endless prospects showed in every direction during their descent: horizons full of ocean, and a great crowd of shipping on the water. Laurence only too late recognized that they had stepped into a gilded cage: the matchless views were so because the palace hill was encircled all around with high windowless walls that barred all communication with the outside world, and their quarters looked upon the sea through windows barred with iron.

From the air, the kiosques had seemed joined with the sprawling palace complex, but the connection proved only a roofed cloister, open to the air: all the doors and windows which might have led into the palace proper were locked and forbidding, black and shuttered against even the entry of their gaze. More of the black slaves stood guard at the foot of the terrace stairs, and in the gardens the Kazilik dragons lay in sinuously knotted heaps, their glittering yellow eyes slitted open and resting watchfully on Temeraire.