Blood of Tyrants (22 page)

Laurence surprised himself by finding this offer, though from so unexpected a quarter, intensely appealing; Gerry went running for his harness, which Laurence found himself able to sling on as easily as an old favorite coat, and Temeraire put him up to his neck. The carabiner clasps were comfortable in his hands. Laurence harnessed himself to the heavy and well-secured chain of the breastplate Temeraire wore, and felt the enormous leap that took them off the deck like a springing away from care: wind tearing by and the curving vastness of the world opening wide beneath them, even the massive
Potentate
diminishing into toy-like insignificance as Temeraire circled higher; they seemed almost level with the enormous cloud-banks that broke up the sky a little way north.

Laurence drew a deep breath of the thin cold air, gladly, and Temeraire turned his head at the end of his long neck, looking back at him, and called, “Is this not splendid, Laurence? Shall we try a first pass?”

“I am ready whenever you should care to make the attempt,” Laurence answered him, and held on with real delight as Temeraire flung himself into a spiraling course.

He was all the happier to find that he could offer some thoughts—tentative, but he hoped not foolish—on the subject of the maneuvers: several points at which Temeraire’s head had been concealed from him, by the contortions of his body, which he thought might open a dragon to being taken by surprise with an attack aimed at the vulnerable back. Temeraire agreed with his conclusions, and after some further exercise, they settled it they should ask Churki to practice, on the morrow—“If Hammond can spare me,” Laurence was forced to add.

“We might invite him to come aloft also,” Temeraire said, a
notion which Laurence privately could not very much imagine that gentleman appreciating: Hammond spoke rather dismally of Churki, whose affections had evidently been bestowed upon a very unwilling subject, and he was regularly to be found chewing enormous wads of coca leaves, which he evidently considered a sovereign remedy for sea-sickness, even when the swell was not above ten feet.

“I will have a word with Churki on the subject,” Temeraire continued. “I am sure it cannot be healthy for him to be always closeted inside that stuffy ship, any more than for you: there is a much better color in your face now. And perhaps you will stay on deck with me to-night, Laurence? I have heard the ship’s officers saying the hands would be turned up to sing, and a couple of the fellows exchanged books with Wampanoag’s officers, which they might be asked to lend us: I believe Immortalis’s Lieutenant Totenham has a new novel called
Zastrozzi
, which he has already finished, and pronounced remarkably good.”

“By all means,” Laurence said, and though he found the novel, a dreadful gothic with an appalling villain, wholly distasteful, he was more than content with his company: if Temeraire had no great quarrel with the novel’s moral turpitude, which he seemed to find less shocking than peculiar, he roundly condemned its construction and what seemed to be several omitted chapters, so they had the pleasure of disliking it together, for their several reasons; and Temeraire did not treat him as an invalid, and shut his mouth on every other word. By the time they had finished out the novel, Laurence stealing an hour here and there from his studies as he might, he found he preferred Temeraire’s society above anyone else’s, dragon or no.

“I am glad to have had something quite new,” Temeraire said, “even if it was not really satisfactory,” when they went aloft for exercise again: a morning flight had already become their settled routine, “and now we are sure to have something better to read soon: I think those are the Changshan Islands, over there.”

Laurence put his glass up to his eye and looked out along the
line of Temeraire’s gaze: a scattered archipelago of green and white islands, dotting the sea. Two days to Tien-sing harbor, if the wind stayed fair.

The flooring of the palace was constructed peculiarly on two levels: the lower of hard smooth-polished stone, great flags of green marble shot with deep veins of gold, joined by the thinnest mortar, on which the dragons walked, and above this a network of slightly raised platforms of dark amber-colored wood and gold, for the people. Laurence had been given ample opportunity to examine it, in performing his reluctant obeisances before Crown Prince Mianning, who sat upon a great throne of gold on a dais set at the very end of the great hall. A great host of scarlet dragons and dark blue were gathered on either side of the aisle approaching the dais, with a pair of sleek beasts of pitch-black coloration one to either side of the throne.

The value of the wooden floor, to those kneeling, was certainly very great, particularly those poor souls of rank so lowly they evidently were not permitted to raise their heads while royalty remained within the room. It had an echoing quality from the gap and the stone beneath, not unlike that of the hollow deck of a ship. Laurence found it comforting: the jewel-encrusted silken robes weighed on his shoulders enough to have made him feel a king in truth and not merely in play-act; he was grateful to have anything to remind him of his true and proper place.

When he saw the round incendiary rolling across the planks beside him with its fuse smoking, that same habit came to his service: he recognized the rumbling clatter of its progress, and automatically put down the thick, low-hanging sleeve of the robe in the path of the ball, and snatched it hot from the ground.

And there he was forced to stop an instant: the nearest windows, behind the throne, were latticed over with heavy wooden shutters. “Temeraire!” he called, without thinking: and indeed
Temeraire was already in motion, reaching forward to hook with a talon a pair of the shutters and tearing them away. Laurence leapt forward upon the dais and flung the incendiary outside as though heaving a rock. Even as it flew, the charge took fire and erupted, flame licking in at the frame of the window; long splinters from the wood, smoldering, scattered upon the floor.

Laurence ducked away from that furious hail, and only belatedly realized his shelter was none other than the throne. “What was that?” Temeraire said, and added, “ow!” in protest: the explosion had ceased, and Laurence looked around to see the dragon’s side sprouting half-a-dozen red-enameled splinters the size of rapiers, dug in between the scales.

The first moments of blank surprise gone, abruptly the guards sprang into action: they surrounded the crown prince bodily, and Laurence found himself enveloped in their protective ranks as well. A deep-voiced man somewhere beyond them was shouting orders to get the prince away, to hide him—

“Laurence!” he heard Granby shout, but Laurence had no opportunity to answer over the noise: the enormous orange-red dragons in their armored plates, who had been arrayed at the back of the room, were running forward to make formation around the throne: smashing to pieces the wooden floor, bowling men and dragons to either side in their haste: there were twelve of them, heavy-weights all. Four of the beasts seized the elaborate carved borders of the dais, which Laurence had thought mere decoration, but now seemed to be intended almost as handles. A shout came; that deep voice—one of the dragons, Laurence belatedly realized—counted three, and they heaved; the entire dais swayed up into the air and they were moving, the dragons’ heavy four-taloned feet thumping upon the ground as they began to run.

Laurence, holding on to the throne for very life, had only time to throw one startled look back at Temeraire, who had been shouldered out of the way by the pack and was only just righting himself. The back wall of the palace fell before the red dragons as they
bulled forward; it went down not smashed but in a single piece, as though by design; then there were wings everywhere blotting out the sky, the translucent skin glowing orange-red with the sun above them, and with another heave they were aloft. The palace grounds fell away: off the side of the dais, Laurence could see the yellow roofs glowing in the late-morning sun, and the silver-grey brick of the vast plazas, rapidly dwindling away below.

Laurence said to Prince Mianning, “Where are they taking us?” He supposed it was a violation of all etiquette, but at present there was no-one to object to that: they were quite alone upon the dais. The platform was carried low, beneath the dragons’ sides; each one clutched a handle, and their wings beat wildly overhead. Laurence could not even catch sight of a single officer, nor see the dragons’ heads.

Mianning’s face was composed, despite the assassination attempt and his having been swept pell-mell away in such a fashion. “To the Summer Palace,” he answered, as calmly as though he had only gone for a pleasant stroll, but then he paused: he leaned forward from the throne and looked down at the ground that spilled away beneath them, and then towards the position of the sun.

Laurence caught sight of his look, of the frown that suddenly touched the crown prince’s forehead. Mianning put his hand on the hilt of his long blade: though the sheath was adorned with jewels and gold, when Mianning drew a few inches of the blade to loosen it, they gleamed good serviceable steel. Laurence watched him: he missed his own sword painfully at the moment. “What is it?” he asked grimly.

“We are being taken in the wrong direction,” Mianning said.

He fell silent, and Laurence could think of nothing to propose. He glanced over the side: they were already past the city limits, and the pale green fields of spring spilling away below were so far distant they were merely squares upon a chessboard. There was nothing to be done but wait. Laurence looked back: was there a small speck that might have been a dragon, to their rear? He could not be
sure: it might as easily have been a bird. Temeraire would surely have followed them as soon as he was able, but he might have been held back somehow, or misdirected.

“Did you see the assassin?” Laurence said to Mianning, who regarded him thoughtfully a long moment; Laurence did not know what to make of his expression, until Mianning said, “He was of your own party: he wore Western clothes.”

“What?” Laurence said. “That is impossible. Hammond, myself, your own servant Gong Su—Captain Granby, Captain Berkley—that was the sum of our party. It is perfectly impossible any one of them should have done such a thing. We were searched, in any case, before we came into the room, and required to leave our swords.”

“And yet six of you entered,” Mianning said. He raised a hand, when Laurence would have protested. “You misunderstand me. The sixth man was surely introduced to your party as you entered the pavilion. If his attack had succeeded, and I had been slain, your party would surely have been blamed.”

Laurence paused. “And
will
be blamed, if, for instance, we should be found to have died of wounds taken in the attempt?” he asked grimly. Mianning inclined his head in answer.

Hammond had been deeply anxious over the preparations for this mission not least because its outcome was by no means certain: a substantial conservative faction of the Imperial court passionately opposed anything they called foreign adventures, and had made an attempt to unseat Mianning as the Imperial heir on the occasion of their last visit. It had not occurred to Laurence that this passion might extend so far as to openly murder their crown prince, but he could imagine no-one else who might have arranged such an incident. Napoleon might have a long arm, but not so long as this.

“Lord Bayan was given the right to oversee the preparations for our meeting,” Mianning said. “The conservative party raised a great protest at your coming at all within the walls of the Forbidden
City, and suggested I am excessively partial towards your nation, and might be inclined to allow you too much license.” He looked towards the sun, which lay ahead of their flight. “His estate lies west of the city.”

The dragons carried them towards the lowering sun for nearly an hour. At last they began a descent over what seemed to Laurence a sprawling country estate: a great wilderness of gardens in the Chinese style—meandering paths and great pitted boulders amidst running streams crossed by graceful arched bridges, and a large pavilion which might have accommodated a horde of dragons beside the house.

Their dais was set down in a wide courtyard with great care, and a gentleman dressed in embroidered robes of great magnificence came out of the house to meet them, prostrating himself with all correct formality. “Lord Bayan,” Mianning said, calm but watchful; there were a dozen blank-faced guards on either side, besides of course the dragons.

“My humble abode is honored beyond measure by your visit, Your Highness,” Lord Bayan said. “I am full of desolation that the peace and tranquility of your days should have been profaned by so desperate an attack upon you by the Westerners, whom I am told have infested the palace grounds like so many evil termites gnawing away at live wood.” If this speech were not enough to make his position plain, the look he gave Laurence, sidelong, would have sufficed alone: a mingling of disgust and disdain. And beneath that, something of terror; there was a dew of sweat scattered upon the top of his broad shaven forehead, and he had the look of a man who knows he has gone too far.

“My poor home will be your shelter,” Bayan continued, “and I pledge my own life to your safety from attack. I have three most beautiful young concubines, all virgin, who will attend you, and a troupe of actors are in attendance for your entertainment.”

“We are indebted to you for your concern for our well-being, and our brother’s,” Mianning said. “We must at once however
write to our father, who even now shall have heard such news as will make him concerned for our health.”

“You shall be given pen and ink at once, Your Highness,” Bayan said; after a few more stilted pleasantries and fencing exchanges they were with inexorable courtesy escorted inside the house with the guards trailing, deep within to a spacious chamber, nobly appointed, with a great writing-desk. Brushes and ink and paper were already laid out waiting. Mianning seated himself as easily as though he were in his own house and favorite chair, and taking up the brush began to write.