Empire of Ivory (4 page)

The Edinburgh streets were quiet in the morning,

unnaturally so, and deserted but for the dragons sleeping

in stretched ranks over the old grey cobbles. Temeraire's

great bulk was heaped awkwardly before the smoke-stained

cathedral, and his tail running down into an alley-way

scarcely wide enough to hold it. The sky was clear and cold

and very blue, only a handful of terraced clouds running

out to sea, a faint suggestion of pink and orange early

light on the stones.

Tharkay was awake, the only soul stirring when Laurence

came out; he was sitting, crouched against the cold, in one

of the other narrow doorways to an elegant home, the heavy

door standing open behind him, looking into the entry hall,

tapestried and deserted. He had a cup of tea, steaming in

the air. "May I offer you one?" he inquired. "I am sure the

owners would not begrudge it."

"No, I must go up," Laurence said; he had been woken by a

runner from the castle, summoning him to a meeting at once.

Another piece of discourtesy, when they had only arrived so

late; and to make matters worse, the boy had been unable to

tell him of any provisions made for the feeding of the

hungry dragons. What the ferals should say when they awoke,

Laurence did not like to think.

"You need not worry; I am sure they will fend for

themselves," Tharkay said, not a cheering prospect, and

offered Laurence his own cup for consolation; Laurence

sighed and drained it, grateful for the strong, hot brew.

He gave Tharkay back the cup, and hestitated; the other man

was looking across the cathedral square with a peculiar

expression-his mouth twisted at one corner.

"Are you well?" Laurence asked; conscious he had thought

not enough about his men, in his anxiety over Temeraire;

and Tharkay he had less right to take for granted.

"Oh, very; I am quite at home," Tharkay said. "It is some

time since I was last in Britain, but I was tolerably

familiar with the Court of Session, then," nodding across

the square at Parliament House, where the court met:

Scotland's highest civil court, and a notorious pit of

broken hopes, endless dragging suits, and wrangling over

technicalities and estates; presently deserted by all its

solicitors, judges, and suitors alike, and only a

scattering of harried papers blown up against Temeraire's

side like white patches, relics of old settlements.

Tharkay's father had been a man of property, Laurence knew;

Tharkay had none; the son of a Nepalese woman perhaps would

have been at some disadvantage in the British courts,

Laurence supposed, and any irregularity in his claims

easily exploited.

At least he did not look at all enthusiastic to be home; if

home he considered it, and Laurence said, "I hope,"

tentatively, and tried awkwardly to suggest that Tharkay

might consider extending his contract, when they had

settled such delicate matters as payment for those services

already rendered: Tharkay had been paid for guiding them

along the old silk trading routes from China, but since

then he had recruited the ferals to their cause, which

demanded a bounty beyond Laurence's private means. And his

services could by no means be easily dispensed with now,

not until the ferals were settled somehow into the Corps,

Tharkay being, apart from Temeraire, almost the only one

who could manage more than a few words of their odd,

inflected language. "I would gladly speak to Admiral Lenton

at Dover, if you would not object," Laurence added; he did

not at all mean to discuss any such irregular question with

whichever notable was commanding here, after the treatment

which they had so far received.

Tharkay only shrugged, noncommittal, and said, "Your

messenger grows anxious," nodding to where the young runner

was fidgeting unhappily at the corner of the square,

waiting for Laurence to come along.

The boy took him the short distance up the hill to the

castle gates; from there Laurence was escorted to the

admiral's office by an officious red-coated Marine, their

path winding around to the headquarters building through

the medieval stone courtyards, empty and free from hurry in

the early-morning dimness. The doors were opened, and he

went in stiffly, straight-shouldered; his face had set into

disapproving lines, cold and rigid. "Sir," he said, eyes

fixed at a point upon the wall; and only then glanced down,

and said, surprised, "Admiral Lenton?"

"Laurence; yes. Sit, sit down." Lenton dismissed the guard,

and the door closed upon them and the musty, book-lined

room; the Admiral's desk was nearly clear, but for a single

small map, a handful of papers. Lenton sat for a moment

silently. "It is damned good to see you," he said at last.

"Very good to see you indeed. Very good."

Laurence was very much shocked at his appearance. In the

year since their last meeting, Lenton seemed to have aged

ten: hair gone entirely white, and a vague, rheumy look in

his eyes; his jowls hung slack. "I hope I find you well,

sir," Laurence said, deeply sorry, no longer wondering why

Lenton had been transferred north to Edinburgh, the quieter

post; he wondered only what illness might have so ravaged

him, and who had been made commander at Dover in his place.

"Oh..." Lenton waved his hand, fell silent. "I suppose you

have not been told anything," he said, after a moment. "No,

that is right; we agreed we could not risk word getting

out."

"No, sir," Laurence said, anger kindling afresh. "I have

heard nothing, and been told nothing; with our allies

asking me daily for word of the Corps, until there was no

more use in asking."

He had given his own personal assurances to the Prussian

commanders; he had sworn that the Aerial Corps would not

fail them, that the promised company of dragons, which

might have turned the tide against Napoleon, in this last

disastrous campaign, would arrive at any moment. He and

Temeraire had stayed and fought in their place when the

dragons did not arrive, risking their own lives and those

of his crew in an increasingly hopeless cause; but the

dragons had never come.

Lenton did not immediately answer, but sat nodding to

himself, murmuring. "Yes, that is right, of course." He

tapped a hand on the desk, looked at some papers without

reading them, a portrait of distraction.

Laurence added more sharply, "Sir, I can hardly believe you

would have lent yourself to so treacherous a course, and

one so terribly shortsighted; Napoleon's victory was by no

means assured, if the twenty promised dragons had been

sent."

"What?" Lenton looked up. "Oh, Laurence, there was no

question of that. No, none at all. I am sorry for the

secrecy, but as for not sending the dragons, that called

for no decision. There were no dragons to send."

Victoriatus heaved his sides out and in, a gentle, measured

pace. His nostrils were wide and red, a thick flaking crust

around the rims, and a dried pink foam lingered about the

corners of his mouth. His eyes were closed, but after every

few breaths they would open a little, dull and unseeing

with exhaustion; he gave a rasping, hollow cough that

flecked the ground before him with blood; and subsided once

again into the half-slumber that was all he could manage.

His captain, Richard Clark, was lying on a cot beside him:

unshaven, in filthy linen, an arm flung up to cover his

eyes and the other hand resting on the dragon's foreleg; he

did not move, even when they approached.

After a few moments, Lenton touched Laurence on the arm.

"Come, enough; let's away." He turned slowly aside, leaning

heavily upon a cane, and took Laurence back up the green

hill to the castle. The corridors, as they returned to his

offices, seemed no longer peaceful but hushed, sunk in

irreparable gloom.

Laurence refused a glass of wine, too numb to think of

refreshment. "It is a sort of consumption," Lenton said,

looking out the windows that faced onto the covert yard;

Victoriatus and twelve other great beasts lay screened from

one another by the ancient windbreaks, piled branches and

stones grown over with ivy.

"How widespread-?" Laurence asked.

"Everywhere," Lenton said. "Dover, Portsmouth,

Middlesbrough. The breeding grounds in Wales and Halifax;

Gibraltar; everywhere the couriers went on their rounds;

everywhere." He turned away from the windows and took his

chair again. "We were inexpressibly stupid; we thought it

was only a cold, you see."

"But we had word of that before we had even rounded the

Cape of Good Hope, on our journey east," Laurence said,

appalled. "Has it lasted so long?"

"In Halifax it started in September of the year five,"

Lenton said. "The surgeons think now it was the American

dragon, that big Indian fellow: he was kept there, and then

the first dragons to fall sick here were those who had

shared the transport with him to Dover; then it began in

Wales when he was sent to the breeding grounds there. He is

perfectly hearty, not a cough or a sneeze; very nearly the

only dragon left in England who is, except for a handful of

hatchlings we have tucked away in Ireland."

"You know we have brought you another twenty," Laurence

said, taking a brief refuge in making his report.

"Yes, these fellows from where, Turkestan?" Lenton said,

willing to follow. "Did I understand your letter correctly;

they were brigands?"

"I would rather say jealous of their territory," Laurence

said. "They are not very pretty, but there is no malice in

them; though what use twenty dragons can be, to cover all

England-" He stopped. "Lenton, surely something can be

done-must be done," he said.

Lenton only shook his head briefly. "The usual remedies did

some good, at the beginning," he said. "Quieted the

coughing, and so forth. They could still fly, if they did

not have much appetite; and colds are usually such trifling

things with them. But it lingered on so long, and after a

while the possets seemed to lose their effect-some began to

grow worse-"

He stopped, and after a long moment added, with an effort,

"Obversaria is dead."

"Good God!" Laurence cried. "Sir, I am shocked to hear itso deeply grieved." It was a dreadful loss: she had been

flying with Lenton some forty years, the flag-dragon at

Dover for the last ten, and though relatively young had

produced four eggs already; perhaps the finest flyer in all

England, with few to even compete with her for the title.

"That was in, let me see; August," Lenton said, as if he

had not heard. "After Inlacrimas, but before Minacitus. It

takes some of them worse than others. The very young hold

up best, and the old ones linger; it is the ones between

who have been dying. Dying first, anyway; I suppose they

will all go in the end."

Chapter 2

"CAPTAIN," KEYNES SAID, "I am sorry; any gormless imbecile

can bandage up a bullet-wound, and a gormless imbecile you

are very likely to be assigned in my place. But I cannot

stay with the healthiest dragon in Britain when the

quarantine-coverts are full of the sick."

"I perfectly understand, Mr. Keynes, and you need say

nothing more," Laurence said. "Will you not fly with us as

far as Dover?"

"No; Victoriatus will not last the week, and I will wait

and attend the dissection with Dr. Harrow," Keynes said,

with a brutal sort of practicality that made Laurence

flinch. "I have hopes we may learn something of the

characteristics of the disease. Some of the couriers are

still flying; one will carry me onwards."

"Well," Laurence said, and shook the surgeon's hand. "I

hope we shall see you with us again soon."

"I hope you will not," Keynes said, in his usual acerbic

manner. "If you do, I will otherwise be lacking for

patients, which from the course of this disease will mean

they are all dead."

Laurence could hardly say his spirits were lowered; they

had already been reduced so far as to make little

difference out of the loss. But he was sorry. Dragonsurgeons were not by and large near so incompetent as the

naval breed, and despite Keynes's words Laurence did not

fear his eventual successor, but to lose a good man, his

courage and sense proven and his eccentricities known, was

never pleasant; and Temeraire would not like it.

"He is not hurt?" Temeraire pressed. "He is not sick?"

"No, Temeraire; but he is needed elsewhere," Laurence said.

"He is a senior surgeon; I am sure you would not deny his

attentions to those of your comrades who are suffering from

this illness."

"Well, if Maximus or Lily should need him," Temeraire said

crabbily, and drew furrows in the ground. "Shall I see them

again soon? I am sure they cannot be so very ill. Maximus

is the biggest dragon I have ever seen, even though we have