Empire of Ivory (50 page)

clearing suddenly thick in his nostrils, the new-copper

smell of blood and dirt vividly recalled, of sour vomit. He

had the strong sensation of rope, pressing into the skin of

his face, and he rubbed his hand uneasily over his cheek as

if he might find a mark there, though they had all faded;

there was nothing more than a little roughness, perhaps, an

impression of the corded rope left upon the skin.

Jane joined him after a little while, her fine coat

discarded and her neckcloth also; there were bloodstains on

her shirt. She sat down on the bench and leaned forward

mannish with her elbows braced against her knees, her hair

still plaited back but the finer strands about the face

wisping free.

"May I beg a day's leave of you?" Laurence asked,

eventually. "I must see my solicitors, in the City. I know

it cannot be long."

"A day," she said. She chafed her hands together absently,

though it was not cold in the least, even with the sun

making its last farewells behind the barracks-house. "Not

longer."

"Surely they will keep her quarantined?" Laurence said,

low. "Her captain saw our own quarantine-grounds; he must

have realized she was taken ill, as soon as he saw her. He

would never expose the other dragons."

"Oh, they thought it out with both hands; never fear," Jane

said. "I have had the account of it, now. He was sent home

by boat; she was let to see him off, from a distance, and

told that he had been sent to the covert outside of Paris,

where the mail-couriers nest. I dare say she flung herself

directly into their ranks. O, what a filthy business. By

now it has been well-spread, I am sure: the couriers go

every quarter-of-an-hour, and new come in, as often."

"Jane," Laurence said, "Napoleon's couriers go to Vienna.

They go to Russia and to Spain, and all through Prussia-the

Prussian dragons themselves are penned in French breeding

grounds; our allies whom we deserted, in their hour of

need-they go even to Istanbul, and from there, where will

the disease not be carried?"

"Yes, it is very clever," she said, smiling, with a

parchment thinness to the corners of her mouth. "The

strategy is very sound; no one could argue with it. At a

stroke we go from very nearly the weakest aerial force, in

Europe, to the strongest."

"By murder," Laurence said. "It can be called nothing else;

wholesale murder." Nor was there any reason why the

devastation should end in Europe. All the maps over which

he had labored, through their half-year's journey home from

China, unfolded again for him without any need for their

physical presence; the wavering course of their journey now

made a track for slow creeping death to run along in

reverse. Strategy, strategy, would call it a victory to see

the Chinese aerial legions decimated: without them, the

Chinese infantry and cavalry could hardly stand against

British artillery. The distant corners of India brought

under control, Japan humbled; perhaps a sick beast might be

delivered to the Inca, and the fabled cities of gold flung

open at last.

"I am sure they will find a prettier name for it, in the

history books," Jane said. "It is only dragons, you know;

we ought think nothing more of it, than if we were to set

fire to a few dozen ships in their harbor, which we would

gladly enough do."

He bowed his head. "And this is how wars should be fought."

"No," she said tiredly. "This is how they are won." She put

her hands on her knees, and pushed herself standing. "I

cannot stay, I must take the courier for Dover at once; I

have persuaded Excidium to let me go. I will need you by

tomorrow night." She rested her hand on his shoulder a

moment, and left him.

He did not move, a long while, and when he at last raised

his head, Temeraire was awake and watching him, the slitpupiled eyes a faint gleam in the dark. "What has

happened?" Temeraire asked quietly, and quietly Laurence

told him.

Temeraire was not angry, precisely; he listened, and grew

rather intent than savage, crouched low; when Laurence had

done, he said, simply, "What are we to do?"

Laurence wavered uncertainly-he did not understand; he had

expected some other response, something more than this-and

said at last, "We are to go to Dover-" He stopped.

Temeraire had drawn back his head. "No," he said, after a

moment's strange stillness. "No; that is not what I meant,

at all."

Silence. "There is nothing to-no protest which-She is

already sent," Laurence said, finally; he felt thicktongued, helpless. "The invasion is to be expected at any

moment, we are to stand guard at the Channel-"

"No," Temeraire said loudly. There was a terrible resonance

in his voice; the trees murmured back with it, shivering.

"No," he repeated. "We must take them the cure. How can we

come at it? We can go back to Africa, if we must-"

"You are speaking treason," Laurence said, without feeling,

oddly calm; the words only a recitation of fact, distant.

"Very well," Temeraire said, "if I am an animal, and may be

poisoned off like an inconvenient rat, I cannot be expected

to care; and I do not. You cannot tell me I should obey;

you cannot tell me I should stand idle-"

"It is treason!" Laurence said.

Temeraire stopped, and looked at him only. Laurence said,

low and exhausted, "It is treason. Not disobedience, not

insubordination; it cannot-there is no other name which it

can bear. This Government is not of my party; my King is

ill and mad; but still I am his subject. You have sworn no

oath, but I have." He paused. "I have given my word."

They were silent again. There was a clamor back in the

trees; some of the ground-crew men returning from their

day's leave, noisy with liquor; a snatch of raised songthat saucy little trim-rigged doxy-and roar of laughter, as

they went into the barracks-house, their lanterns

vanishing.

"Then I must go alone," Temeraire said wretchedly, so

softly that for once there was real difficulty in making

out the words. "I will go alone."

Laurence breathed once more; hearing it, said aloud, made

everything quite clear. He was grateful, it occurred to

him, that Jane had refused; that he had not that pain to

give. "No," he said, and stepped forward, to put his hand

on Temeraire's side.

Chapter 16

LAURENCE WROTE TO Jane, the merest word; no apology could

suffice, and he would not insult her, by asking her to

sympathize, adding only:

...and I wish to make clear, that I have in no wise made my

thoughts known to, nor received Aid of, my officers, my

crew, or any man; and, neither deserving nor soliciting any

excuse for my own Part, do heartily entreat that all blame

attaching to these my actions should be laid at my door

alone, and not upon those who cannot even be charged, as

might on similar occasions be merited, with culpable

blindness, my Resolve having been formed bare minutes

before setting ink to this Page, and will upon its

enclosure be immediately carried out.

I will not trespass further upon the Patience which I fear

I have already tried past all hope of endurance, and beg

you only to believe me, in despite of the present

Circumstances,

Yr obdt Svt, &c.

He folded it over twice, sealed it with especial care, and

laid it flat upon his neatly made cot, the address faced

upwards; and left his small quarters, walking between the

narrow rows of snoring men to go outside again. "You may be

dismissed, Mr. Portis," he said to the officer of the

watch, who was nodding at the edge of the clearing. "I will

take Temeraire up for a turn; we will not have a quiet

flight again in some time."

"Very good, sir," Portis said, barely concealing a

bloodshot yawn, and did not stay to be persuaded further:

not quite drunk, but his gait a little shambling as he went

back to the barracks-house.

It was not nine. In an hour, at most two, Laurence

supposed, they should be missed; he relied on scruple to

forbid Ferris's opening the letter, addressed to Jane,

until he began to suffer a greater degree of anxiety, which

might save another hour; but then the pursuit would be

furious. There were some five couriers in the covert

sleeping now; more by Parliament; some of the fastest

flyers in all Britain. They had not only to outrun them to

Loch Laggan, but after to the coast: every covert, every

shore battery from Dover to Edinburgh would be roused to

bar their passage.

Temeraire was waiting, ruff pricked, agitated and crouched

small to conceal it. He put Laurence upon his neck, and

launched quickly; London falling away, a collection of

lamps and lanterns and the bitter smoke of ten thousand

chimneys, ships' lights moving gently down the Thames, and

only the rushing hollow sound of wind. Laurence shut his

eyes, until they had grown accustomed, then looked at his

compass to give Temeraire the direction: four hundred

miles, north by north-west, into the dark.

It was strange to be all alone on Temeraire's back again,

not merely for a pleasure-flight; the ordinary round of

duty did not often allow it. Unburdened but by the

triviality of Laurence's weight and the barest harness,

Temeraire stretched himself and drove high aloft, to the

margins where the air grew thin; pale clouds passing

beneath them over the dark ground, fellow sailors in the

air. His ruff was flattened down, and the wind came

whistling hard over his back, cold at these heights even in

the midst of August; Laurence drew his leather coat more

snugly close, and put his hands beneath his arms. Temeraire

was going very fast; his wings beating a full, cupped

stroke, and the world beneath blurred when Laurence looked

over his shoulder.

Close towards dawn, Laurence saw to the distant west

faintly an eerie glow which illuminated the curve of the

earth, as if the sun meant to rise the wrong way round; a

color broken, now and again, by belching smoke: Manchester,

and its mills, he guessed, so they had gone some hundred

and sixty miles, in less than seven hours. Twenty knots,

twenty-five.

A little after dawn, Temeraire stooped, without a word, and

came to ground at the shores of a small lake to drink

deeply, his head thrust partway beneath the water, with the

gulps traveling convulsively down his throat; he stopped,

and panted, and drank some more. "Oh, no; I am not tired;

not very tired, only I was so thirsty," he said a little

thickly, turning his head back: despite his brave words he

shook himself all over, and blinked away a dazed expression

before he asked, in a more normal tone, "Shall I set you

down a moment?"

"No; I am very well," Laurence said; he had his grog-flask

with him, and in his pocket a little biscuit, which he had

not touched. He wanted nothing; his stomach was closed.

"You are making a good time, my dear."

"Yes, I know," Temeraire said complacently. "Oh! It is more

pleasant than anything, to go so quickly, in pleasant

weather, only the two of us; I should like it above all, if

only," he added, looking round sorrowfully, "I did not fear

that you were unhappy, dear Laurence."

Laurence would have liked to reassure him; he could not.

They had passed over Nottinghamshire during the night; they

might have passed over his home, his father's house. He

rubbed his hand upon the neck-scales, and said quietly, "We

had better be off; we are more visible, in the day."

Temeraire drooped, and did not answer, but launched himself

aloft again.

They came in over Loch Laggan after seven hours more, at

the dinner-hour; Temeraire without even the pretense of

courtesy or warning dived directly into the feeding

grounds, and not waiting for the herdsmen seized two

surprised cows out of the pen: his descent too swift even

for them to bellow. Alighting with them on the ledge which

overlooked the training flights, he crammed them one after

another down his throat, not pausing even to swallow all

the first before he began upon the second. He gave a

relieved sigh, afterwards, and belched replete; then

daintily began to lick clean his talons before he made a

guilty start: they were observed.

Celeritas was lying in the waning sun, upon the ledge, his

eyes half-lidded. He looked aged, as he had not during

their training, so long ago and yet scarcely three years

gone; the luster of his pale jade-colored markings had

faded, as cloth washed in too-hot water, and the yellow

darkened to a bronzey tone. He coughed a little hoarsely.

"You have put on some length, I see."

"Yes, I am as long as Maximus," Temeraire said, "or anyway,

not much shorter; and also I am a Celestial," he added

smugly: they had left off their training under the pressure