Crucible of Gold (21 page)

Hammond might well express such anxiety, Laurence thought grimly: he could hardly name anything he would less desire than to hand a man over into bondage: whether owned by another man or a dragon scarcely made any difference. The great distance between Taruca’s home—whence he had surely been taken unwillingly—and his present abode was now explained, and his resignation at the fresh abduction. A man once snatched into slavery might be indifferent to a change of master, and would scarcely see any reason to believe that any honest or merciful act should be the design of his new captors.

“Pray inquire of the gentleman,” Laurence said, cutting Hammond’s continuing murmur short, “why he was taken from his home: had he committed a crime?”

“I must remind you, Captain, that we cannot intrude our own judgment upon their practice in such matters—” Hammond halted, seeing Laurence’s face, and turned to speak to Taruca, whose indignation when he had made out the line of Hammond’s inquiry required no translation.

“What reason but that I had strayed too far, walking, from the protection of my own
ayllu
, and might be seized without retribution: indeed, why would anyone have wanted to, if I were a criminal and a thief?” Taruca said, and hesitated; then drew himself up proudly and added, “If more reason were needed, I am of the
khipukamayuq
, and have fathered three sons and seven daughters yet
alive when last I saw them: and beside that I am marked, of course, which you do not need me to say.”

Finishing this speech, his shoulders bowed as he said almost privately to himself, “Of course you do not mean to take me back,” with a faded resignation. Laurence would have liked to reassure him more decidedly than he could, in the present circumstance.

Meanwhile the listening governor bent down and peered at Taruca with one slitted red eye. “Is he marked?” He lifted his head away again and shook it, setting the rings of his peculiar accoutrement jingling, and said to Temeraire. “So he has survived the pox? The matter grows even worse. You are sea-people: you have no
khipu
yourself for him to work with, and no other tasks suitable for a man of his years: what would you even do with him? And from what you say, you did not even offer a proper challenge.”

“But we could not have made a challenge, even if we had wanted to,” Temeraire said, “as I have explained Iskierka did not mark where Taruca was taken from very well: she did not know he was blind, and would not be able to tell us the way back. Anyway, we mean to take him back to his children, not to keep him to do work for us: and I think it is very unkind that he should have been taken away from them. If you mean to reproach us for taking him from his owner, that is scarcely worse than taking him from his family—”

Even before Temeraire had translated his own speech, Laurence had gathered its direction by the increasingly broad gestures of protest Hammond made, trying to catch his attention; at last Laurence laid a hand on Temeraire’s side to interrupt him, and received an account of the conversation.

“You cannot so address the representative of a nation!” Hammond said, sharply. “Sir,” he said, turning his head up towards the governor and shouting, “sir, I must inform you that this in no way represents the position of His Majesty—”

Governor Hualpa, who so far had taken no particular notice of the human members of their party, lowered his head to put that
enormous red eye on Hammond, whose speech faltered a little, meeting it. “Why are you shouting at me?” Hualpa said. “The governor of men will not receive you, because your country-men have proven they are not to be trusted, and you would very likely try to take him prisoner for gold; you have no-one else to blame for that but yourselves. Are you trying to say that this dragon has no standing to speak for your party?”

This inquiry left Hammond agape and plainly reluctant to effectually supplant himself with Temeraire, as representative of their party. Yet if there were to be any hope of persuading the governor to permit Taruca to go free, without provoking grievous incident, some avenue of communication at least was necessary to them; Laurence took Hammond by the arm.

“You have yourself expressed confusion as to the means the French had found to open negotiations,” Laurence said to him. “If the Inca
will
receive a dragon as ambassador, when they will not any man, the mystery is explained: you must not disavow Temeraire’s authority, if you desire any chance of forming relations with them ourselves.”

“Yes—yes, of course,” Hammond said, reluctantly dragging, and at last conveyed the same to Hualpa, not without doing his best to extract from Laurence a commitment to make Temeraire say only what Hammond first approved.

“You know my own sentiments on this matter,” Laurence said, while Hammond spoke to Hualpa, “and I am sorry—very sorry indeed—to learn that slavery is practiced here; but in justice to Hammond, we cannot hope to effect any change in their society, if we begin with antagonism; and indeed we are in poor circumstances to do so when our own nation can be reproached with its own share of barbarism in this regard.”

“Well, of course I will be polite,” Temeraire answered him, “but I must say it is rather much to be called thieves, only because
we do not go about keeping slaves, and chaining them up, and selling them away from their families. It seems to me that it is only a compliment to them that I believed they were not slavers, either, and not an insult—”

“Not an insult!” another voice said, behind them, when Temeraire had turned to mention this to Hualpa; Temeraire looked over his shoulder to see that another dragon had come pacing into the hall: only a little larger than Palta had been, and in plumage entirely of green, “not an insult, when you talk as though I had treated him like a llama—chaining! selling! oh!”

The newcomer, a dragon called Cuarla, having bobbed his head to Governor Hualpa, proceeded to identify himself as Taruca’s injured owner. “And it is not to be borne,” he added, “that this burned dragon should be allowed to take him away: I am sure he
would
chain him up.”

“I would not chain anyone!” Temeraire said, “and I did not take him, anyway: Iskierka did.”

“What are you saying about me?” Iskierka demanded, rousing from her rapt contemplation of the wall; she had grown weary of the conversation, which she could not understand, and wandered off across the floor to go stare upon the panels. Several of the sailors were creeping along on her flanks and trying to use her to hide their attempts to break off small pieces; Ferris had every few minutes to go and chivvy several of them back into place.

“Nothing that is not the truth,” Temeraire said, “so you may lump it; you did take Taruca, and this dragon is here to complain of you and make trouble for all of us because you did.”

Iskierka looked Cuarla up and down and snorted comprehensively. “That little creature may complain of me all day if he likes; what does he mean to do about it?”

“Good God,” Hammond said. “Temeraire, do not—”

“Of course I will not translate that,” Temeraire said, with a flip of his ruff; he was not stupid, although he had to admit that Iskierka’s remark, however unkind, was rather to the point. The snort,
however, did not require any translation: even without an intelligible word said to him, Cuarla puffed all his scales out so as to make himself nearly twice his size—which still left him somewhat less than a quarter of Iskierka’s.

“I will not have it,” he said furiously, “I will not! I demand a challenge, if she will not give him back;
and
apologize;
and
give me one of her men, too; she ought not have so many if it only makes her greedy for more.” And he glared at Iskierka with slitted fury.

Temeraire regarded him in some perplexity: surely he could not be a sensible creature. “He wants to fight you,” Temeraire said, to Iskierka’s demands for more translation. “No, I am
not
mistaken; and no, he does not think it is some other dragon he must fight; you can see perfectly well he is staring right at you, even if you do not know his language.”

“Perhaps,” Hammond said anxiously, “perhaps we might reconsider—Captain Laurence, it seems to me—the dragon seems very attached, and not at all likely to have mistreated—”

Overhearing, Iskierka swung her head around, outraged. “I am not going to
lose
to him.”

“It can scarcely forward our cause for you to maim or perhaps even kill a native beast, after you have already begun by stealing one of his—” Hammond paused, and groped around for a word which should sound nicer than
slave
, Temeraire supposed.

“Enough,” Laurence said, finally, while Granby spoke urgently to Iskierka, who huffed a little steam but subsided. “Temeraire,” Laurence said, “pray convey to these—gentlemen—that we cannot see our way clear to handing over Taruca at present, as he does not wish it, but there can be no question of a battle: the governor at least, I hope, will not imagine that Cuarla has any chance of success, nor promote such an unequal contest.”

But when Temeraire had tried to explain, Hualpa shook his head, the gold ringing like bells. “Of course Cuarla is not going to fight her in his person,” he said. “What use would laws be, if that
were the only recourse? We might as well be living without any civilization at all. No: if you refuse to return the man, and make acceptable restitution—”

“Well, we certainly are not going to give him any of our crew, only because we made a mistake; that is just nonsense,” Temeraire put in; he did not feel any need to discuss that with Hammond, as it went nearly without saying.

“—then she must fight the representative of the state,” Hualpa said, “and not merely the dragon she has injured.”

“Oh,” Temeraire said.

“I am sure I do not care in the least,” Iskierka said. “I will fight anyone he likes; and it will serve them right.”

That Iskierka was willing at any time to enter herself into a contest of violence was undisputed; but Laurence was no happier than Hammond to find them engaged in such an enterprise: aside from all the risks of failure, the risks of success were nearly as great, in its likelihood of provoking resentment and hostility.

“Sir,” he said to Taruca, having recruited Temeraire to translate for him, “I must beg you to take no offense; but if Iskierka is to hazard her life for your freedom, I will know, first, that there is no better alternative than this challenge.”

When Temeraire had explained, Taruca said, “What better alternative can there be? It is not Cuarla’s fault, poor creature; he did not take me from hiding. He exchanged a young man to my last
ayllu
for me: I had no kin there, either, and the boy wished to marry one of the young women, so I said I would come. So now of course Cuarla has the right to a battle.”

“Temeraire, you are certain he says he went to Cuarla by choice?” Laurence said, baffled. “Is it not his contention he was seized illegally?”

“I was, but that was many
ayllu
ago,” Taruca said, quite evidently
seeing no contradiction between his right to liberty and Cuarla’s right to satisfaction, and puzzled that Laurence should even ask. “And you are not of my
ayllu
; you have no standing to demand that the champion of the state should fight for you.”

“Have you no right to appeal to the governor yourself?” Laurence asked.

“He is a dragon,” Taruca said with even more confusion.

“Then to—the governor of men?” Laurence said, a vague guess, and Taruca in some frustration raised his hands and let them drop again.

“What would I ask the governor? I have no complaint to make of Cuarla, to seek a different
ayllu
near-by, and I cannot live without any at all: I am blind, and I am too old. Besides, I was first taken in Collasuyo, a different province and a long way from here; even if I were a young man, chances are I would be snatched if I tried to walk the roads all that way alone.

“Why did you take me, and why did you say you would take me to my home, if you were not willing to give challenge? I am an old man to have my hopes raised so. At least when I asked Cuarla, and he refused, I understood: it is not in the natural order of things that a little dragon with a small
ayllu
should give me up. But you pressed me and I thought: you have three mighty dragons, and I can hear that your
ayllu
is large and full of young men; perhaps you could truly mean to be so generous. But it seems you only took me from my
ayllu
without any understanding of the law.”

Laurence was silenced; he could not dispute the justice of Taruca’s charge. And if they had not meant to keep him a servant, that was little excuse; Iskierka had still taken him for their own selfish benefit; and Laurence had no confidence that Taruca would not face reprisal from his owner, however previously mild, now that he had been so vocal about his desire to be elsewhere.

“Temeraire,” he said finally, “pray tell the governor that intending no offense, we are sorry to have nevertheless given it; and that honor demands we see Taruca to his home. If by this challenge
we can secure his liberty without further injuring relations between our nations, we will venture it, so long as Iskierka is willing.”

“I might as easily fight, instead,” Temeraire said, belatedly regretting having been quite so forceful about Iskierka’s responsibility, when Hualpa explained that she must be properly attired to enter the arena, and some twelve young women he called mamaconas came out of a storeroom of the hall carrying together a golden neck-collar very like the one Hualpa wore, with the fringe splendidly woven of black wool. “After all, we are all of one party.”

“As she is the offender, she must face the trial,” Hualpa said. “Come: you may sit on her side of the court.”

Temeraire sighed. “Yes, that is for you,” he said, as the mamaconas brought the collar to Iskierka, who was eyeing it with wretchedly undisguised greed; she did not need to
advertise
their nearly destitute state. “And Laurence, the rest of us must go outside to the courtyard.”

Which was if anything more magnificent than the hall itself: open to the sky and with two fountains at either end, and the dragon Iskierka was to fight at the other side, sunning himself on the hard stone: a sleek creature with long silver scales tipped with green, and enormously long black fangs overhanging his lower jaw.