Read Tongues of Serpents Online
Authors: Naomi Novik
Tongues of Serpents (7 page)
It was a mode of service which had gone thoroughly out of fashion
in the last century among most aviators, who increasingly preferred to better preserve the spirit of their partners; the Government did not always agree, however, and Rankin was of an ancient dragon-keeping family, who had preserved their own habits and methods and passed these along to the scions sent into the Corps, at an age sufficiently delayed for these to be impressed upon them firmly, along with a conviction of their own superiority to the general run of aviators.
“He cannot be permitted to ruin the creature,” Laurence said. “We might at least bar him from use of the hood—”
“Interfere with a hatching?” Granby cried, looking at Laurence sidelong and dismayed. “No: he has a right to make the best go of it he can, however he likes. Though if he can’t manage it in fifteen minutes, someone else can have a try,” he added, an attempt at consolation, “and you may be sure fifteen minutes is all the time he will have; that is all I can do.”
“That is not all that
I
can do,” Temeraire said, mantling, “and I am not going to sit about letting him throw nets and chains and hoods on the hatchling: I do not care if it is not in the shell anymore. In my opinion, it is still quite
near
being an egg.”
He realized this was an irregular way of looking at the matter, but after all, if the hatchling had not yet eaten anything, and if perhaps a bit of egg were still stuck to its hide, one could not be
sure
that it was ready to manage on its own, and so it was still one’s responsibility. “Anyway,” he added, “I do not like him at all, and I don’t see that he has any right to be a captain again; just let him try and come here, and I will knock him down for it.”
“You are not doing anything which Granby would not like!” Iskierka said, jetting out a bit of steam.
“As though you had anything to say to it,” Temeraire said, coolly. “Anyway, you do things which Granby does not like every day.”
“Only,” Iskierka said, “when it is particularly important,” a monstrous lie, “and anyway, that is quite different. You might think of Granby, since you are always on about how I do not take proper care of him: I am not having
him
made not a captain, like you have done with Laurence, only because you are being absurd again and worrying about hatched dragons,” she added, which thrust hit home quite successfully; Temeraire flinched involuntarily, and put back his ruff.
“Why,” Iskierka continued, “I have seen this Rankin person: he is smaller than a pony, even. I could have burnt him up to a cinder as soon as I cracked the shell.”
“If he wanted
you,”
Temeraire said, “he might have you, and welcome,” but this was only a feeble bit of quarreling, and not really a just argument; he put his head down and stared at the eggs unhappily.
“And,” he said to Laurence, a little later, “if the egg does not take him, I suppose he will want to try the second, and then the third; I am sure he will not just go, when he has come all this way where no-one wants him, only to be difficult.”
“Only to have another dragon; but so far as that goes, I am afraid you may be right,” Laurence said, low. “But there is not much we can do about it, my dear, if we do not care to put Granby in a very awkward position; and make our own the worse. The eggs are not formally in our care at all, but his.”
“But Arkady charged me with
his,”
Temeraire said, “and I gave my word; surely that makes me interested.”
Laurence paused and agreed somberly, “That does put another complexion on the matter,” but it did not offer any other solution, except squashing Rankin, which would have been quite unfair, as a matter of relative size, and which Laurence insisted was not to be contemplated, despite Admiral Roland’s letter.
Laurence did not dissuade Temeraire with much enthusiasm; he would not have greatly minded Rankin’s being squashed under other circumstances, and the present situation would have rendered the event not only painless but highly desirable. His sentiments in the matter were only the more exacerbated the following morning, when Riley called upon them: Laurence had preferred to pass another irregular night up on the promontory in his small tent, still more comfortable a berth than remaining aboard ship, when he now must be careful only to visit the quarterdeck, and not go forward.
For Rankin was of course perfectly correct in the point of etiquette, and they were both barred from the field of honor, which was the only other suitable redress Rankin could have demanded for Laurence’s actions in their last meeting. Laurence could not be sorry in the least for having handled Rankin so violently, but neither could he force himself
into Rankin’s presence, nor pursue the quarrel to which Rankin could not make answer, and retain any pretensions to the character of a gentleman.
“And I cannot blame you for it, either,” Riley said, “but it left me in an awkward position. I had to have him to dinner, and Bligh, too, or look rather shabby; and I am wretchedly sorry, Laurence: is this egg likely to be something out of the common way? Because what must the cawker do ten minutes after we are at table but declare Bligh has been monstrous used by a pack of mutinous dogs, and it ought not be borne.”
“Oh, damn him,” Laurence said, unguarded in savage exasperation. “No, Tom, so far as the egg goes; not if you mean of an order to pick a quarrel with Temeraire; but that has nothing to do with the case. We cannot set upon a British dragon, if it is as small as a Winchester. Are we to have a pitched battle in the harbor? I cannot conceive what he is thinking.”
“Oh, I will tell you
that,”
Riley said. “He is thinking he means to have the beast, will-you, nill-you. I beg you to imagine how our passenger took it: Bligh at once informed me he considers it my duty to ensure the Admiralty’s orders as regards the egg are carried out; and that he will be sure to write their Lordships to express his opinion, and convey that he has made me so aware.”
And the very last thing desirable to Riley at the present date was any suggestion of disobedience or recalcitrance, and all the more so if there were any sign it should be provoked by Laurence or even amenable to him. Their connection had already injured Riley’s credit with their Lordships to a severe extent, and he served now, as did all Laurence’s former associates, under a veil of suspicion. Bligh might not carry his point so far as his re-establishment in the colony, and his ill-management might invite the scorn rather than the sympathy of the Admiralty; that did not mean the Navy Board would not accept with the other hand any charges Bligh laid at Riley’s door.
All the more so, Laurence knew, that they had been given fresh cause to regard Temeraire, and any personage even remotely associated with him, with suspicion: Temeraire had received a letter also, in the post carried by the
Beatrice;
from Perscitia, who had evidently somehow acquired a scribe.
We have finished the Pavilion already—
“Oh!” Temeraire said sadly, “and I am not there to see it.”
—and begun on a second; we were puzzled where we should get the funds, as it is amazing how quickly Money goes. The Government tried to persuade us all to go back to the Breeding Grounds and leave off building: when we were almost quite finished, if you can imagine it. So the promised Supply has been very late and slow, and when they do send us any Cattle they are thin and not tasty, so we have had to buy Food of our own, and it is very dear at present; also Requiescat will eat like A Glutton, of course
.
But we contrived: Majestatis suggested we should send Lloyd to Dover, to inquire after carting work, and we have worked out that men will pay a great deal just for us to carry things to London, and other Towns, as we can do it much more quickly than Horses; and I have worked out a very nice Method by which one can calculate the most efficient Way to go among all of them, taking on some goods and leaving off others; only it grows quite tiresome to calculate if one wishes to go to more than five or six Places
.
There was a little noise about our coming and going—nobody much minded when it was just the Winchesters, or even the Reapers; but of course, Requiescat can carry so very much more—even if he is too lazy to go further than Dover to London and back—and Ballista and Majestatis and the other Heavy-weights, and after all, it is not as though we do not
fit
into the Coverts, so we really saw no reason they should not go, too. But then Government grew upset—when they might have given us proper Food, to begin with, and we should never have needed to trouble ourselves!—and they tried to make a Quarrel, and set some harnessed dragons in the Covert and told them to keep us out of it
.
They were out of Scotland, I think; we did not know them, particularly, but Ballista said to them it was no sense squabbling over something so silly: for look, the Government had just put
them
in the Covert, because they did not want
us
in the Covert, even though
they
were just as big; and anyway there was plenty of Room, and we were only passing through. They all thought that was quite sensible, once she gave them a
few of our Cows to be friendly; it seems Cows are very dear in the coverts, too, and nobody gets them very often anymore, even the harnessed beasts
.
There was besides this communiqué a good deal of gossip about the relations among the dragons, which Laurence read to Temeraire only half-attending; between Perscitia’s lines he could easily read the frantic reports racing through Whitehall: unharnessed heavy-weights descending as they wished into every great city of Britain, terrifying the populace and wrecking the business of ordinary carters to boot; and bribing their harnessed fellows with the greatest of ease, despite all the certain persuasions and efforts of those dragons’ captains.
“That is a great pity about Gladius and Cantarella having a falling-out,” Temeraire said, “for I was sure they would have made a splendid egg; also I do not like Queritoris very much, for he was always making a fuss about carrying soldiers, when we all had to do it; so very tiresome, for everyone, but complaining did not make it any better. Laurence, do you suppose we might carry things for people, here, and so be paid? Only, no,” he interrupted his own thought, rather downcast, “for there is only this one town, and no other to carry things to; how I wish we were home!”
Laurence had wished it, too, but silently folded away the letter which killed his hopes of return aborning; it yet crackled in his coat pocket now, as he answered Riley, “I am sorry you should have had the unpleasantness of his threats; we will of course not ask you to interfere, Tom; nor, I hope, put you in any awkward position.”
“Well, I hope I am not so much a scrub as to come here and ask you out of the side of my mouth to have a care, for my own sake,” Riley said. “I am pretty well found in prize-money, after all, and if I am set ashore, at least I can take my little fellow home, and not worry my life away wondering what absurd thing Catherine is doing with him.” This, a little bitterly: he had
not
received a letter from Captain Harcourt.
“But this could easily grow to be a more serious matter than a mere quarrel,” Laurence said soberly to Temeraire, after Riley had left, “if Bligh chooses to make it a charge of disobedience, and their Lordships pleased to have an excuse for a court-martial; I can easily imagine it.”
“I can, too,” Temeraire said, “and I am sure we oughtn’t let him hurt Riley, or Granby, either; but we cannot let Rankin hurt the egg,
either. Laurence, I have made Roland and Demane bring the egg out, just long enough so I might look at it, and I think it is going to hatch very soon; can we not take it away?”
“Away?” Laurence said; there was nowhere to go.
“Oh, into the countryside,” Temeraire said, “only until it has hatched, I mean; and then we can come back again, and it may choose among the officers if it likes. Or if you thought better,” he added, “we might take one or two of the best of them, instead, so it might choose among them directly: but no-one who would mean to try and use a
hood
, or a
net.”
It was a scheme which Laurence ought at once have rejected, but he surprised himself by thinking soberly that so blatant a maneuver would, at least, be a stroke bold enough to ensure blame could be set only to their own much-overdrawn account. Granby and Riley, left behind and unable to trace their whereabouts, could not so easily be complained of as Granby and Riley standing idly by, in the face of some interference carried out immediately before them.
It was scarcely calculated to win him approval from their Lordships; certainly none from Bligh, but there was, Laurence with a little dark humor acknowledged, something liberating in having nothing whatsoever of which he might be robbed by the law: not even hope. He looked at the egg, himself: he did not hold himself up as an expert, but the shell was certainly harder than it had been, aboard ship, and with that same brittle, slightly thinning quality which he remembered a little from Temeraire’s hatching, and Iskierka’s.
“We could take no one else with us,” Laurence said, “at least, not consenting; and there would be something curious in abducting an aviator to make him a captain: the fellow could not help but be doubted, afterwards.”
“Well, to be perfectly honest I think it just as well not to take any of them,” Temeraire said. “I do not think much of the lot: they were all quite unpleasant, on the ship, and they
will
think they have a right to the eggs, even though they had nothing to do with making them, and I have been taking care of them all this while. They have nothing to recommend them, any more than Rankin does: I don’t suppose the hatchling will want any of them.”
“We are in too much disgrace, my dear, to expect to see any of them display to advantage,” Laurence said, “but Lieutenant Forthing
at least is held a good officer, Granby tells me, and fought with courage at the battle of Shoeburyness.”