League of Dragons (9 page)

Laurence halted in the road and turned to stare at him. “Mr. Hammond, if you can explain to me how, having agreed to call myself the son of the Emperor of China, I am to make amends to a man who has so egregiously insulted him to my face, and call myself a gentleman, much less a prince, in future, I am ready to listen.”

Hammond gnawed on his lip. “No, no,” he said. “No, I quite see; it would entirely undermine the claim,” as though he merely considered the matter in a pragmatic light. “Ah! But wait; I am certain—I am almost certain, the gentleman is neither a prince nor an officer. As an Imperial prince, your rank, your elevated rank, must preclude your meeting anyone of such markedly inferior rank—you cannot distinguish someone so far beneath you. I must find out his name; I must speak to Kolyakin, in the Imperial household—I will call on him in the morning—”

Laurence turned away from Hammond's mutterings and back to the drudgery of the ice-crusted snow, his head lowered. He could not quarrel with Hammond's point, and it aligned too well with what he knew to be his duty; and yet all feeling revolted at making such a use of the distinction which the Emperor had bestowed upon him—to deny satisfaction to a gentleman whom he had so deeply and deliberately offended. And yet the severity of the insult had merited the reproof. Laurence had struck the man precisely because he had felt he could not accept anything but an apology so complete as to be abasement. But he had done so with the intention of giving satisfaction if asked for it, as the man surely would.

“You will speak with the gentleman's friends, first, I hope,” Laurence said heavily, “and make it known to them that I will consider an apology. I should be glad to excuse his behavior on the grounds of drink.” He did not like soliciting an apology for an offense so great, and he did not see how the other man could offer one remotely satisfactory without appearing a coward, after receiving a public blow. But he could not stomach giving the man no recourse at all.

“Oh, yes, naturally,” Hammond said, already looking more relieved with every moment. “I will certainly arrange the matter.”

“And if you cannot,” Laurence said, “I must ask you to inform the gentleman's friends that they must be ready to get him away instantly, should any mischance befall me.”

Temeraire roused when Laurence came back to the covert, and peered up at the stars. “I did not expect you another two hours, Laurence. Are you taken ill?” he asked, anxiously. He had overhead some of the Russian officers say that more than a thousand men had died yesterday, of some sort of fever, and Temeraire could not but recall that Laurence's father had died in his
bed,
where nothing ought to have menaced him.

“No, I am well. I did not care to stay,” Laurence said. “Shall we read something?”

The temporary relief brought by this answer vanished by the next day: Temeraire was quite certain Laurence was not well after all. He was very silent, and spent nearly all the morning in his tent, writing letters and arranging his papers as though before a battle.

“Would there be any chance of some of the French army coming this way, after all?” Temeraire asked, when Laurence came out at last; perhaps Laurence had not said anything, because he did not wish to raise hopes.

But Laurence answered too easily. “I am afraid not,” he said. “I believe they have all crossed the Niemen, by last report.” So it was not that, either. Temeraire did not like to pry; he knew Laurence felt it a great rudeness to ask questions, and solicit information which had not been volunteered. But Laurence remained too-silent and grave all that day, and did not eat much of his dinner, which he took at the covert that evening for the first time since they had come to Vilna.

Temeraire had nothing to occupy him sufficient to distract him from these anxious observations. The Russians had no notion of aerial drill under ordinary circumstances, and on the amount of supply they possessed, all the dragons were inclined to sleep more than fly, anyway. Temeraire had made arrangements, through Grig, for some of the smaller beasts to spend the afternoon in his clearing, where Temeraire recited some poetry to them, and afterwards tried to spur them to discussion. But they mostly yawned, and then he yawned, too, and it was so very easy to drowse, even though Temeraire took very much to heart the instruction, from the Analects, that a dragon ought not spend more than fourteen hours of the day in sleep.

He tried to read alone, or have Roland read to him from the newspapers, when one might be found in a language which she read sufficiently well—Temeraire again felt the injustice that Sipho should have gone away with his brother and Kulingile; Kulingile had gone to the Peninsular Army, where would be no shortage of English newspapers, and perhaps even books, which anybody at all could read to him; and meanwhile Roland could only read in three languages, and not very well in any of them—or he might amuse himself by doing some mathematical problems in his head, only these made him drowsy as well.

So he was very much at leisure to worry, and think up new sideways questions which might approach the question of Laurence's health. None of these produced a satisfactory answer. Laurence was not tired; Laurence was not too hot, nor too cold; Laurence did not have the head-ache. Laurence did indeed recall vomiting over the side during that typhoon in the year six, but he did not feel the least inclination to be similarly ill at present.

“Laurence,” Temeraire said finally in desperation, “perhaps you have heard of typhus?”

“I have,” Laurence said. “It is going through the hospitals, I am afraid; poor devils.”

“Oh! The hospitals only?” Temeraire said, much relieved. “
You
would have no thought of typhus, would you?”

“What, of being ill? None whatsoever. Whence has this sudden concern for my health arisen?” Laurence said, raising his head from his pistols, which he was cleaning.

“Only, I do not quite understand,” Temeraire said, “how your father seems to have died in his bed, and you have been so very quiet—”

Laurence said, “My father was seventy-two, and had been ill a long time, my dear; I may hope for another two score years myself, if nothing should—” He stopped very abruptly.

Temeraire was immediately alarmed, and only more so, when Laurence said, “Temeraire, I beg your pardon. I am not ill; but it is true that my thoughts are occupied. I am sorry that I should have let you see it, when I cannot confide their subject to you; honor demands my silence at present. Having said so much, I trust you will not press me further.”

“And I did not, but I very much
wished
to,” Temeraire said to Churki, unhappily, that afternoon, when Laurence had left with Hammond on yet another social occasion. Laurence's speech had done nothing to make Temeraire feel less uneasy: entirely the reverse. Laurence's idea of honor was very peculiar, and nearly all-encompassing; it had led him into dangerous situations before now.

“I should think so,” Churki said. “Why did you not insist on being informed further at once? What if he has got himself into some difficulty, which you ought to manage for him? Men do not always like interference, and by and large,” she added, “I do not hold with
unnecessary
interference; they ought to be allowed to manage their own affairs. But there are some matters which a respectable dragon ought not allow to go forward among her people; why, I have known men to be lured out of their
ayllu
to visit a woman in another, and then they are snatched up by some other dragon and never seen again, all because their own dragon did not intervene soon enough.”

“Well, I am sure Laurence has not been visiting some woman,” Temeraire said uneasily; it did occur to him that Laurence had been attending all these parties, at which he understood there were a great many ladies all in very dazzling gowns; and Laurence did have odd notions about what might be due the reputation of a gentlewoman. “Perhaps you are right; perhaps I ought to inform myself. Roland,” he said, turning to break in on her sword-drill with Baggy, “Roland, you would not happen to know which party Laurence has gone to, this afternoon? You might go after him, and just keep an eye upon him.”

Baggy dropped his sword at once and sat down looking grateful for the respite: he was finally filling out his well-stretched frame little by little, but remained still very lanky.

“I mightn't at all,” Roland said, with feeling, wiping sweat and strands off her brow; she wore her sandy hair braided in a queue, but a great deal of it had escaped during the practice: her enthusiasm for the exercise was considerably greater than Baggy's. “I should have to put on a dress. You had better ask Forthing to go after him, or Ferris: he can do the pretty when he has to.”

“Ferris, certainly,” Temeraire said, mindful of the wretched condition of Mr. Forthing's coat, which he could hardly bear to have seen even within the confines of the covert, much less out in the world, as associated with any officer of his; neither was his appearance at all improved by the large wadding of bandages bound up over the wound in his cheek. “—pray ask him to go at once, if you please.”

“I'll go!” Baggy volunteered, and scrambled up and away with a flailing of thin limbs and an expression of relief.

Ferris went out in a condition of which any dragon might be proud: in a neat grey coat, freshly sponged down and with a golden stick-pin in the lapel, trousers faultlessly white and boots well-polished. “I will find him, never fret, Temeraire,” Ferris said. “I have enough Russian to ask about, and there aren't so many aviators about that people won't remember a flying-coat.”

“And perhaps you might find Grig for me,” Temeraire said to Roland, after Ferris had gone, just in case: if any other dragon
had
been nosing about Laurence, Grig was sure to know of it.

But Grig did not need to be summoned: he was at that very moment darting into the clearing in a rush. “Temeraire, some of those ferals have returned, that you asked to go west for you; but they have come in over Symerka's clearing, and he thinks they are trying to get at his treasure.”

“Oh! What treasure has he got to speak of, but three silver plates, dented!” Temeraire said, in some exasperation.

But this paucity in no wise deterred Symerka, who was indeed beating aloft furiously, launching himself at the two cowering ferals, who together could have fit under one of his wings. Temeraire had to roar very loudly to get his attention; so that the entire infantry battalion at the foot of the hill burst out of their tents and began milling around, and a few of them fired guns in panic.

“These are my guests, who have come to bring us intelligence, not to take anything,” Temeraire said to Symerka severely, putting himself in front of the ferals. “You cannot be supposing everyone a thief, and jumping on them without so much as a word.”

“Well, as
you
are vouching for them,” Symerka said, “I suppose they are all right; but I am sure that one looked towards my plates,” he added, stretching his neck as he flew back and forth before them a few more times, before at last subsiding and returning to his clearing.

“I am sorry you should have had so unfriendly a welcome,” Temeraire said to the ferals: it was their chief come back again, and one other with her, a thin pale-grey creature almost as white as Lien, except with grey eyes instead of red. Temeraire was sorrier yet when the feral chief declared herself quite overset, and in need of restoration after their fright: she could not speak a word until they were fed. The quartermaster refused to be of any use, and in any case the dinner porridge would not be ready for another four hours yet. Roland had to be sent down to the city with a gold coin, and Temeraire then had to see this go down the gullets of his visitors in the form of two handsome round-bellied pigs.

“
Now
then,” Temeraire said pointedly, when at last they had licked the last specks of blood from their muzzles.

“First,” the feral chief said, uncowed, “I should like us to be very clear on terms. I suppose you would agree I have had a share in bringing you the message, even if I don't bring it myself, so long as I introduce you to someone who does?”

“Certainly,” Temeraire said, “and that is quite enough of terms to discuss, until there
is
such a message, as I suppose you mean that you don't have it.”

“Well, no,” she said, “not yet: Bistorta here was not ready to believe me, that there was gold in it, and she says it is getting dangerous to go into France.”

“They are all gone mad for this Napoleon down there,” the pale-grey dragon said, in French, when Temeraire inquired of her. “All of them, whether they are harnessed or no. It has come to be so that they will herd you down for questioning as a spy if they do not know you. But your Prussian friends are there, yes, in the breeding grounds outside Moirans-en-Montaigne: I have seen them. It used to be I would take a sheep off their herders now and then, before the patrols grew so unfriendly. But these days, I would not risk going in
except
for gold, and as I told Molic here, I will believe in gold when I see it in front of my face; although you have certainly given us a handsome meal,” she added, “and so behold, I am ready to be persuaded.” She folded her wings neatly and tucked her head back in an expectant curve.

Temeraire sighed deeply and resigned himself to salting the wound: Roland and Baggy were told off to display the golden plate service once more, and the appreciative sighs of his guests only made him feel, all the more, what he would be losing. But he cheered himself that Bistorta could not say for certain whether Eroica himself were there, nor recall the names of any particular Prussian dragons; she might be entirely mistaken.

“But I will certainly attempt it,” she said, after one last acquisitive squint at the engraving upon the largest platter. “Oh! Will I not! But tell me now what I must say to this fellow Eroica, when I find him.”