Crucible of Gold (11 page)

Gong Su had managed somehow to climb out of the belly of the ship, his boots tied together by their laces slung around his neck, with a thin oilskin pouch. He stood helping a still-drink-addled O’Dea balance on the ship’s figurehead—a woman with flowing robes and also great feathered wings, which Temeraire had never seen before due to its ordinarily being hidden beneath the dragondeck; she presently pointed almost directly into the air.

Gong Su pulled himself up Temeraire’s side, when put onto the harness. “No, sir,” Temeraire heard him say, when Laurence asked him about Fellowes, “I am sorry, but I did not see him; all the lower decks are full of smoke, and there are many men dead.”

“It is only to be expected, sure,” O’Dea said, and hiccoughed. “The judgment of the ocean—”

“Enough,” Laurence said: that was all he said, but O’Dea subsided, abashed, and muffled his further hiccoughs into his hand.

“Should I try for some of those water-casks, sir?” Roland called up.

“Tell her no,” Laurence said to Temeraire, “but you ought to drink whichever of them you can reach, yourself, and let Iskierka and Kulingile do the same; and you had better eat those sheep.”

“Those fellows in the belly-netting will be thirsty very soon,” Temeraire pointed out, “and so will you, Laurence.”

“Let Roland light along a couple of canteens, and as for those bastards, they may go hang,” Laurence said, and it was not only his altered voice which made him sound grim. “You must travel as light as may be, my dear: we will want land sooner than water.”

An hour passed, dragging up supplies and a few more survivors from the ship, and then Iskierka was winging by. “We aren’t pulling anyone else up,” Granby called over wearily; his arm and his
shoulder were bound up tightly against his body. “Not alive, anyway: the water is too cold. We had better go.”

“Set your course northeast,” Laurence said, “and keep as far apart from the others as you can and still be in sight of one another, so we may best watch for land; make sure Iskierka and Kulingile have lanterns for the night.”

It was very strange and lonely to fly away from the remains of the
Allegiance
for good, out across the open ocean with no destination. She was nearly all beneath the water now and sinking more rapidly; only the dragondeck yet jutted out into the sky. The ship’s boats were pulling away, crammed with sailors. They could not keep in company with them, of course; there had only been a brief shouting back and forth. Lieutenant Burrough was in command of the launch, and Lieutenant Paris, a boy of fifteen, in charge of the one cutter which had survived, with Midshipman Darcy to assist him.

“You do not see Riley anywhere, do you?” Laurence asked quietly, after they had spoken with the boats.

“No—” Temeraire said, after a moment. Riley had fed him that enormous red-fleshed tunny, three days after his hatching. Temeraire had never been quite so hungry ever in his life as those first few days, and Laurence had been asleep at the time—Riley had come down to the cabin with the fish himself because most of the sailors were too afraid—

“No,” Temeraire said. “No, Laurence, I do not see him.”

Laurence said nothing; when Temeraire glanced back, his face was set and grim, his eyes looking over the smoking wreckage distant; he only nodded, and turned to ask Mrs. Pemberton, “Ma’am, would you prefer to go in the boats?” She had been retrieved along with Mr. Hammond from the bow cabins: they had pushed out a window and waved her spare petticoat to attract notice, and been pulled up by a rope. “We can lower you down to them, and take off one or two of the men, if they are crowded.”

“Thank you, sir; I should rather stay aboard,” she said.

“You must realize,” Laurence said, “dragons can stay aloft at most two days—perhaps three—”

“As I understand it, there is very little chance of a boat making landfall, either, from these latitudes,” she said. “If it were done, t’were well it were done quickly, I think.”

“Of course you are much better remaining with me than going in one of those boats,” Temeraire said, swallowing a last morsel of raw mutton. After all, Lung Shen Li flew all the long way from China to the coast of Australia, scarcely landing along the way. Laurence might be pessimistic, but Temeraire was quite certain
he
was not going to sink in an ignominious fashion, without even a battle for excuse; he would certainly not drop before they found land.

“I still think we ought to pull her up,” Iskierka grumbled, circling the tip of the
Allegiance
once more: all her prize-goods had been in the hold, and Granby’s coat was entirely spoilt. That did not cheer Temeraire precisely, because one could not be happy that anything so very nice was ruined, or going to the bottom of the ocean for no-one but sea-serpents to enjoy, but it was something that Iskierka could not show away anymore, and meanwhile Laurence’s own formal robes were safely aboard in their oilskin bag, with Temeraire’s talon-sheaths for company; he could congratulate himself on having detailed Roland to keep them safe, and on the deck.

“We have already tried, when she did not have so much water in her, so there is no sense in imagining we will do any better a second time,” Temeraire said. “We had much better go.”

He put the sun behind him and flew.

Laurence looked around only once while the
Allegiance
dwindled away behind them, wreckage and flotsam spreading wide around her like the skirts of a court dress; the sharks were already busy in
the water. It was a sorry, bitter end for so many good men: the worst saved and even now making moan in Temeraire’s belly-netting, the best sent down to a silent grave trying to repair their folly, without even hope of glory for reward. Riley would be remembered as the man who had lost a transport on a cloudless day; if any of them lived to carry the report back to the Admiralty.

The weak sun, shrunken down and pale this far south, did little to warm skin and clothes waterlogged with salt, but Laurence was sorry to see it sinking, and still more sorry that the dragons had spent so much of the morning aloft in hunting and play.

They spread out as they flew; by dusk, Kulingile and Iskierka were specks to either side like distant sea-birds, growing faint to see as night fell: then there was only the small struggling glow of the lanterns keeping pace with them through the dark. They made not much noise besides the complaining from below, and even that died over time. The wind cut sharp and icy through the oilskins and tarpaulins on their backs, whistling, and the ocean muttered in low voices, patient.

“I am sorry we did not bring along some of the sheep with us,” Temeraire said, yawning tremendously into the wind as the sun came up after only a brief night. “I would not mind another one now; it cannot be convenient to fish when I have so many people dangling off me.”

He put his head down and flew onward. Laurence could not help but think how much lighter Temeraire would go without the men crammed into his belly-netting; it might mean as much as another day aloft. A thought rooted in darker sentiment, in angry resentment:
They have killed us
.

There were a few rocky atolls scattered across the Pacific at these latitudes; the chances of finding them with neither map nor compass were not to be counted, and if found, little hope of finding another within flying distance from there. These waters were not so hospitable they would sustain three large dragons for long, fishing in the same narrow space.

There was some better chance they would find instead a ship, which might be spied at even great distance by her lights—some lonely whaler plying her lines, or a clipper making for Cape Horn. But such a ship would offer no refuge for any of the dragons; they could only let off their burden, then drown having spent their last strength to rescue the men responsible for the disaster, who deserved better to end their journey at the end of a rope.

Laurence wrote a report as they flew, ten minutes at a time before he had to pause and warm his hands again, tucked inside his coat beneath the tarpaulin. If they did find any such refuge, the Admiralty should at least receive a full accounting, and know Riley had been neither a fool nor an incompetent.

He enclosed this more personal letter to Catherine Harcourt along with his report, folded within a square of oilcloth sawed away from the one wrapped around himself, and tied with a few scraps of fraying rope. He at least had little likelihood of having to
face her in person with such evil news; which event would have been all the more painful for his doubts of her reaction. He hoped Riley would be mourned; Riley deserved to be mourned; Laurence was not at all certain that he would be. Harcourt had married him reluctantly and only for the sake of her coming child, who indeed had proved to be a boy, and she had shown only the greatest impatience since with Riley’s every attempt to fulfill his duty to her.

“Roland, you will keep that by you, if you please,” he said, and she roused from drooping half-slumber to take the packet and put it into her clothing, for safe-keeping. “I hope you will see the letter reaches Captain Harcourt, if you have the chance.”

“I will, sir,” she said, calm as though there had been any real hope of that; it was already afternoon, on the second day. The dragons had been aloft steadily for nearly thirty hours.

“I think there are some dolphins there,” Gerry said, peering over Temeraire’s shoulder. “Look, they are jumping.”

Temeraire roused and abruptly dived, throwing all their stomachs into their throats and raising a yowling of alarm from below, which was silenced by the spray as Temeraire plunged into the pod and came away with three of the dolphins in his talons; he ate them with the efficiency of real hunger and without pausing in his flight, blood spattering back against his breast.

“That is very heartening, I must say,” Temeraire said, licking his talons clean, when he had finished. “And I am sorry, but it is no use complaining; if you had not all run wild, you would not have had to be put into the netting, anyway,” he added, to the unhappy sailors. “I suppose we have not had any sight of land?”

“Not yet,” Laurence said.

Gerry’s sharp young eyes caught a patch of foamy ocean, the next morning: only a scrap of reef some dozen feet from the surface, but that was something. Laurence signaled to Granby and Demane, and the dragons had an hour’s rest, sitting perched on their hind legs with the waves washing over them; the sailors in the netting all pulled themselves up to the top and hung there to keep
out of the water as best they could: they had by now given over complaining.

The dragons drooped half-sleeping. At last, Iskierka roused and said crabbily, “We may as well go on; there is no sense sitting here getting colder and colder,” and shook the spray off her wings before leaping back into the air.

“Are you ready?” Laurence asked Temeraire.

“Oh, certainly,” Temeraire said, although it came out mostly in a murmur; he stretched out his neck very far, crackling, and then one mighty heave propelled him aloft again.

The day crept away slowly, measured out in wing-beats; Temeraire did not bother to open his eyes very often, but only altered his course if Laurence touched him gently and spoke to correct their path. He startled awake once with cold water and yells, and jerked himself farther aloft: he had drifted so low a rising swell had struck him full in the face and run along his belly.

He would have liked to reassure Laurence that this had only been an accident—the result of a moment’s inattention—not in any way a sign. He was tired, of course, but not nearly
that
tired; there was nothing for Laurence to fear. But somehow it was a very great effort to draw breath, and when he had drawn it, he preferred to use it for flying, instead; the air was so very cold.

Iskierka and Kulingile were also flying very low to the water—they were keeping in closer company now. Temeraire saw a spray rise up around Iskierka’s tail for a moment; Kulingile was a little higher in the air, but gradually sinking also. Temeraire heaved breath again and roared—a paltry sort of roar, with nothing of the real force which he could put behind it; only a gesture of defiance, but it rang across the water, and Iskierka’s head jerked up: she looked over and blew out a thin ragged stream of flame, in answer, and together all three of them beat back up determinedly.

Darkness crept up from the rim of the world, a long blue curving
unbroken by anything which might have meant rest—no land, no sails, not even another reef. Temeraire did not really notice the night coming on; all the world had narrowed to the next wingbeat, and the next after that, cupping the air with each stroke and pushing it away, trying only to get enough room for a breath; trying only to draw enough breath for the next stroke. He could hear the swells breaking beneath him from his passage.

“Temeraire,” Laurence said, and, “Temeraire,” as though he had said it more than once already. “There away, two points to starboard, my dear.” Temeraire turned and flew on; he was vaguely conscious that there was some movement upon his back, signals of lantern-light, and a few answering lights ahead, bobbing; then a blue light went hissing up from his back.