Empire of Ivory (13 page)

likely not make either dragon out in the least. "Silly

oriental stuff, this roof, do you insist on having it so?"

"It is not silly oriental stuff at all," Temeraire said,

"it is very elegant: that design is my mother's own

pavilion, and it is in the best fashion."

"You will need linkboys on it all winter long to brush the

snow clear, and I will not give a brass farthing for the

gutters after two seasons," Royle said. "A good slate roof,

that is the thing, do you not agree with me, Mr. Cutter?"

Mr. Cutter had not the least opinion to offer, as he was

backed to the trees and looked ready to bolt, if Laurence

had not prudently stationed his ground crew around the

border of the clearing to forestall just such panicked

flight.

"I am very willing to be advised by you, sir, as to the

best plan of construction, and the most reasonable,"

Laurence said, while Royle blinked around himself looking

for a response. "Temeraire, our climate here is a good deal

wetter, and we must cut our cloth to suit our station."

"Very well, I suppose," Temeraire said, with a wistful eye

for the upturned roof-corners and the brightly painted

wood.

Iskierka meanwhile took inspiration, and began to plot the

acquisition of capital. "If I burn up a ship, is that good

enough, or must I bring it back?" she demanded, and began

her piratical career by presenting Granby with a small

fishing-boat, the next morning, which she had picked up

from Dover harbor during the night. "Well, you did not say

it must be a French ship," she said crossly, to their

recriminations, and curled up to sulk. Gherni was hastily

recruited to replace it under cover of darkness, the

following night, undoubtedly to the great puzzlement of its

temporarily bereft owner.

"Laurence, do you suppose that we should be able to get

more capital, by taking French ships," Temeraire asked,

with a thoughtfulness very alarming to Laurence, who had

just returned from dealing with this pretty piece of

confusion.

"The French ships-of-the-line are penned in their harbors

by the Channel blockade, thank Heaven, and we are not

privateers, to go plying the lanes for their shipping,"

Laurence said. "Your life is too valuable to be risked in

such a selfish endeavor; in any case, once you began to

behave in such an undisciplined manner, you may be sure

Arkady and his lot would follow your example at once, and

leave all Britain undefended, not to mention the

encouragement Iskierka would take."

"Whatever am I to do with her?" Granby said, wearily taking

a glass of wine with Laurence and Jane that evening, in the

officers' common room at the covert headquarters. "I

suppose it is being dragged hither and yon in the shell,

and all the fuss and excitement she has had; but that is no

excuse forever. I must manage her somehow, and I am at a

standstill. I would not be amazed to find the entire harbor

set alight one morning, because she took it into her head

that we would not have to sit about defending the city if

it were all burnt up; I cannot even make her sit still long

enough to get her under full harness."

"Never mind; I will come by tomorrow, and see what I can

do," Jane said, pushing the bottle over to him again. "She

is a little young for work, by all the authorities, but I

think her energy had better be put to use than go in all

this fretting. Have you chosen your lieutenants, Granby?"

"I will have Lithgow, for my first, if you've no objection,

and Harper for a second, to act as captain of the riflemen

also," he said. "I don't like to take too many men, when we

don't know what her growth will be like."

"You do not like to turn them off later, you mean, when

they like as not cannot get another post," Jane said

gently, "and I know it will be hard if it comes to that;

but we cannot shortchange her, not with her so wild. Take

Row also, as captain of the bellmen. He is old enough to

retire if he must be turned off, and a good steady

campaigner, who will not blink at her starts."

Granby nodded a little, his head bowed, and the next

morning Jane came to Iskierka's clearing in great state,

with all her medals and even her great plumed hat, which

aviators scarcely wore, a gold-plated saber and pistols on

her belt. Granby had assembled all his new crew, and they

saluted her with a great noise of arms, Iskierka nearly

coiling herself into knots with excitement, and the ferals

and even Temeraire peering over the trees to watch with

interest.

"Well, Iskierka: your captain tells me that you are ready

for service," Jane said, putting her hat under her arm to

look sternly at the little Kazilik, "but what are these

reports I hear of you, that you will not mind orders? We

cannot send you into battle if you cannot follow orders."

"Oh! it is not true!" Iskierka said. "I can follow orders

as well as anyone, it is only no one will give me any good

ones, and I am only told to sit, and not to fight, and to

eat three times a day; I do not want any more stupid cows!"

she added smolderingly; the ferals, hearing this translated

for them by their own handful of officers, set up a low

squabbling murmur of disbelief.

"It is not only the pleasant orders we must follow, but the

tiresome ones as well," Jane said, when the noise had died

down. "Do you suppose Captain Granby likes to be forever

sitting in this clearing, waiting for you to grow more

settled? Perhaps he would rather go back to service with

Temeraire, and have some fighting himself."

Iskierka's eyes went platter-wide, and she hissed from all

her spikes like a furnace; in an instant she had thrown a

pair of jealous coils around Granby, which bid fair to boil

him like a lobster in steam. "He would not! You would not,

at all, would you?" she appealed to him. "I will fight just

as well as Temeraire, I promise; and I will even obey the

stupidest orders; at least, if I may have some pleasant

ones also," she qualified hastily.

"I am sure she will mind better in future, sir," Granby

managed himself, coughing, his hair already plastered down

soaking against his forehead and neck. "Pray don't fret; I

would never leave you, only I am getting wet," he added

plaintively, to her.

"Hm," Jane said, with an air of frowning consideration.

"Since Granby speaks for you, I suppose we will give you

your chance," she said, at last, "and here you may have

your first orders, Captain, if she will let you come for

them and, to be sure, stand still for her harness."

Iskierka immediately let him loose and stretched herself

out for the ground crew, only craning her neck a little to

see the red-sealed and yellow-tasseled packet, a formality

often dispensed with in the Corps, which directed them in

very ornate and important language to do nothing more than

run a quick hour's patrol down to Guernsey and back. "And

you may take her by that old heap of rubble left at Castle

Cornet, where the gunpowder blew up the tower, and tell her

it is a French outpost, so she may flame it from aloft,"

Jane added to Granby, in an undertone not meant for

Iskierka's ears.

Iskierka's harness was indeed a great deal of trouble to

arrange, as the spines were placed quite randomly, and the

frequent issuing of steam made her hide slick: an

improvised collection of short straps and many buckles,

wretchedly easy to tangle, and she could not entirely be

blamed for growing tired of the process. But the promise of

coming action and the observing crowd made her more

patient; at length she was properly rigged out, and Granby

with relief said, "There, it is quite secure; now try and

see if you can shake any of it loose, dear one."

She writhed and beat her wings quite satisfactorily,

twisting herself this way and that to inspect the harness.

"You are supposed to say, All lies well, if you are

comfortable," Temeraire whispered loudly to her, after she

had been engaged in this sport for several minutes.

"Oh, I see," she said, and settling again announced, "All

lies well; now we shall go."

In this way she was at least a little reformed; no one

would have called her temper obliging, certainly, and she

invariably stretched her patrols farther afield than Granby

would have them, in hopes of meeting some enemy more

challenging than an abandoned old fortification, or a

couple of birds. "But at least she will take a little

training, and eats properly, which I call a victory, for

now," Granby said. "And after all, as much a fright she

gives us, she'll give the Frogs a worse; Laurence, do you

know, we talked to the fellows at Castle Cornet, and they

set up a bit of sail for her: she can set it alight from

eighty yards. Twice the range of a Flamme-de-Gloire, and

she can go at it for five minutes straight; I don't

understand how she gets her breath while she is at it."

They had indeed some trouble in keeping her out of direct

combat, for meanwhile the French were continuing their

harassment and scouting of the coast, with ever-increasing

aggression. Jane used the sick dragons more heavily for

patrol, to spare Temeraire and the ferals: they, instead,

sat most of the day waiting on the cliffs for one warning

flare or another to go up, or listening with pricked ears

for the report of a signal-gun, before they dashed

frantically to meet another incursion. In the space of two

weeks, Temeraire skirmished four times more with small

groups, and once Arkady and a few of his band, sent

experimentally on patrol by themselves while Temeraire

snatched a few more hours of sleep, just barely turned back

a Pou-de-Ciel who had daringly tried to slip past the shore

batteries at Dover, less than a mile from a clear view of

the quarantine-grounds.

The ferals came back from their narrow but solitary victory

delighted with themselves, and Jane with quick cleverness

took the occasion to present Arkady ceremonially with a

long length of chain: almost worthless, being made only of

brass, with a large dinner-platter inscribed with his name

for a medal, but polished to a fine golden shine and

rendering Arkady for once speechless with amazement as it

was fastened about his neck. For only a moment: then he

burst forth in floods of caroling joy, and insisted on

having every single one of his fellows inspect his prize;

nor did Temeraire escape this fate. He indeed grew a little

bristling, and withdrew in dignity to his own clearing to

polish his breastplate more vigorously than usual.

"You cannot compare the two," Laurence said cautiously, "it

is only a trinket, to make him complacent, and encourage

them in their efforts."

"Oh, certainly," Temeraire said, very haughty, "mine is

much nicer; I do not in the least want anything so common

as brass." After a moment he added, muttering, "But his is

very large."

"Cheap at the price," Jane said the next day, when Laurence

came to report on a morning for once uneventful: the ferals

more zealous than ever, and rather disappointed not to find

more enemies than the reverse. "They come along handsomely:

just as we had hoped." But she spoke tiredly; looking into

her face, Laurence poured her a small glass of brandy and

brought it to her at the window, where she was standing to

look out at the ferals, presently cavorting in mid-air over

their clearing after their dinner. "Thank you, I will." She

took the glass, but did not drink at once. "Conterrenis has

gone," she said abruptly, "the first Longwing we have lost;

it was a bloody business."

She sat down all together, very heavily, and put her head

forward. "He took a bad chill and suffered a haemorrhage in

the lungs, the surgeons tell me. At any rate, he could not

stop coughing, and so his acid came and came; it began at

last to build up on the spurs, and sear his own skin. It

laid his jaw bare to the bone." She paused. "Gardenley shot

him this morning."

Laurence took the chair beside her, feeling wholly

inadequate to the task of offering any comfort. After a

little while she drank the brandy and set down her glass,

and turned back to the maps to discuss the next day's

patrolling.

He went away from her ashamed of his dread of the party,

now only a few days' hence, and determined to put himself

forward with no regard for his own mortification; if for

the least chance of improving the conditions of the sick.

...and I hope you will permit me to suggest [Wilberforce

wrote] that any oriental touch to your wardrobe, only a

little one, which might at a glance set you apart, would be

most useful. I am happy to report that we have engaged some

Chinese as servants for the evening, by offering a good sum

in the ports, where occasionally a few of them may be found