Empire of Ivory (5 page)

been to China; he is sure to recover quickly."

"No, my dear," Laurence said uneasily, and broke the worst

of the news-"The sick have none of them recovered, and you

must take the very greatest care not to go anywhere near

the quarantine-grounds."

"But I do not understand," Temeraire said. "If they do not

recover, then-" He paused.

Laurence only looked away. Temeraire had good excuse for

not understanding at once. Dragons were hardy creatures,

and many breeds might live a century and more; he might

have justly expected to know Maximus and Lily for longer

than a man's lifetime, if the war had not taken them from

him.

At last, sounding almost bewildered, Temeraire said, "But I

have so much to tell them-I came for them. So they might

learn that dragons may read and write, and have property,

and do things other than fight."

"I will write a letter for you, which we can send to them

with your greetings, and they will be happier to know you

well and safe from contagion than for your company,"

Laurence said. Temeraire did not answer; he was very still,

and his head bowed deeply to his chest. "We will be nearby," Laurence went on, after a moment, "and you may write

to them every day, if you wish; when we have finished our

work."

"Patrolling, I suppose," Temeraire said, with a very

unusual note of bitterness, "and more stupid formationwork; while they are all sick, and we can do nothing."

Laurence looked down, into his lap, where their new orders

lay amid the oilcloth packet of all his papers, and had no

comfort to offer: brusque instructions for their immediate

removal to Dover, where Temeraire's expectations were

likely to be answered in every particular.

He was not encouraged, on reporting to the headquarters at

Dover directly they had landed, by being left to cool his

heels in the hall outside the new admiral's office for

thirty minutes, listening to voices by no means indistinct

despite the heavy oaken door. He recognized Jane Roland,

shouting; the voices that answered her were unfamiliar; and

Laurence rose to his feet abruptly, straightening as the

door was flung open. A tall man in a naval coat came

rushing out with clothing and expression both disordered,

his lower cheeks mottled to a moderate glow under his

sideburns; he did not pause, but threw Laurence a furious

glare before he left.

"Come in, Laurence; come in," Jane called, and he went in;

she was standing with the admiral, an older man dressed

rather astonishingly in a black frock coat and kneebreeches with buckled shoes.

"You have not met Dr. Wapping, I think," Jane said. "Sir,

this is Captain Laurence, of Temeraire."

"Sir," Laurence said, and made his leg deep to cover his

confusion and dismay. He supposed that if all the dragons

were in quarantine, to put the covert in the charge of a

physician was the sort of thing which might make sense to

landsmen, as with the notion advanced to him once, by a

family friend seeking his influence on behalf of a lessfortunate relation, to advance a surgeon-not even a naval

surgeon-to the command of a hospital ship.

"Captain, I am honored to make your acquaintance," Dr.

Wapping said. "Admiral, I will take my leave; I beg your

pardon for having been the cause of so unpleasant a scene."

"Nonsense; those rascals at the Victualing Board are a pack

of unhanged scoundrels, and I am happy to put them in their

place; good day to you. Would you credit, Laurence," Jane

said, as Wapping closed the door behind himself, "that

those wretches are not content that the poor creatures eat

scarcely enough to feed a bird anymore, but they must send

us diseased stock and scrawny?

"But this is a way to welcome you home." She caught him by

the shoulders and kissed him soundly on both cheeks. "You

are a damned sight; whatever has happened to your coat?

Will you have a glass of wine?" She poured for them both

without waiting his answer; he took it in a sort of

appalled blankness. "I have all your letters, so I have a

tolerable notion what you have been doing, and you must

forgive me my silence, Laurence; I found it easier to write

nothing than to leave out the only matter of any

importance."

"No; that is, yes, of course," he said, and sat down with

her at the fire. Her coat was thrown over the arm of her

chair; now that he looked, he saw the admiral's fourth bar

on the shoulders, and the front more magnificently frogged

with braid. Her face, too, was altered but not for the

better; she had lost a stone of weight at least, he

thought, and her dark hair, cropped short, was shot with

grey.

"Well, I am sorry to be such a ruin," she said ruefully,

and laughed away his apologies. "No, we are all of us

decaying, Laurence; there is no denying it. You have seen

poor Lenton, I suppose. He held up like a hero for three

weeks after she died, but then we found him on the floor of

his bedroom in an apoplexy; for a week he could not speak

without slurring. He came along a good ways afterwards, but

still he has been a shade of himself."

"I am sorry for it," Laurence said, "though I drink to your

promotion," and by herculean effort he managed it without a

stutter.

"I thank you, dear fellow," she said. "I would be et up

with pride, I suppose, if matters were otherwise, and if it

were not one annoyance after another. We glide along

tolerably well when left to our own devices, but I must

deal with these idiotish creatures from the admiralty. They

are told, before they come, and told again, and still they

will simper at me, and coo, as if I had not been adragonback before they were out of dresses, and then they

stare if I dress them down for behaving like kiss-my-hand

squires."

"I suppose they find it a difficult adjustment," Laurence

said, with private sympathy. "I wonder the Admiralty should

have-" and belatedly he paused, feeling he was treading on

obscure and dangerous ground. One could not very well

quarrel with pursuing whatever means necessary to reconcile

Longwings, perhaps Britain's most deadly breed, to service,

and as the beasts would accept none but female handlers,

some must be offered them; Laurence was sorry for the

necessity that would thrust a gently born woman out of her

rightful society and into harm's way, but at least they

were raised up to it. And where necessary, they had

perforce to act as formation-leaders, transmitting the

maneuvers to their wings; but this was a far cry from flag

rank, not to say commanding the largest covert in Britain,

and perhaps the most critical.

"They certainly did not like to give it to me, but they had

precious little choice," Jane said. "Portland would not

come from Gibraltar; Laetificat is not up to the sea-voyage

anymore. So it was me or Sanderson, and he is making a cake

of himself over the business; goes off into corners and

weeps like a woman, as though that would help anything: a

veteran of nine fleet actions, if you would credit it."

Then she ran her hand through her disordered crop and

sighed. "Never mind, you are not to listen to me, Laurence;

I am impatient, and his Animosia does poorly."

"And Excidium?" Laurence ventured.

"Excidium is a tough old bird, and he knows how to husband

his strength: has the sense to eat, even though he has no

appetite. He will muddle along a good while yet, and you

know, he has close on a century of service; many his age

have already shot themselves of the whole business and

retired to the breeding grounds." She smiled; it was not

whole-hearted. "There; I have been brave. Let us to

pleasanter things: you have brought me twenty dragons, and

by God do I have a use for them. Let us go and see them."

"She is a handful and a half," Granby admitted lowly, as

they considered the coiled serpentine length of Iskierka's

body, faint threads of steam issuing from the many needlelike spikes upon her body, "and I haven't ridden herd on

her, sir, I am sorry."

Iskierka had already established herself to her own

satisfaction, if no one else's, by clawing out a deep pit

in the clearing next to Temeraire's where she had been

housed, then filling it with ash: this acquired from some

two dozen young trees which she had unceremoniously

uprooted and burnt up inside her pit. She had then added to

the powdery grey mixture a collection of boulders, which

she fired to a moderate glow before going to sleep,

comfortably, in her heated nest. The bonfire and its

lingering smolder were visible for some distance, even to

the farmhouses nearest the covert, and a few hours past her

arrival had already produced several complaints and a great

deal of alarm.

"Oh, you have done enough keeping her harnessed out in the

countryside, without a head of cattle to your name," Jane

said, giving the drowsing Iskierka's side a pat. "They may

bleat to me all they like, for a fire-breather, and you may

be sure the Navy will cheer your name when they hear we

have our own at last. Well done; well done indeed, and I am

happy to confirm you in your rank, Captain Granby. Should

you like to do the honors, Laurence?"

Most of Laurence's crew had already been employed in

Iskierka's clearing, in beating out the stray embers which

flew out of her pit and threatened to ignite all the covert

if left unchecked. Ash-dusty and tired as they all were,

they had none of them gone away, lingering consciously

without the need of any announcement, and now lined up on a

muttered word from young Lieutenant Ferris to watch

Laurence pin the second pair of gold bars upon Granby's

shoulders.

"Gentlemen," Jane said, when Laurence had done, and they

gave a cheek-flushed Granby three huzzahs, whole-hearted if

a little subdued, and Ferris and Riggs stepped over to

shake him by the hand.

"We will see about assigning you a crew, though it is early

days yet with her," Jane said, after the ceremony had

dispersed, and they proceeded on to make her acquainted

with the ferals. "I have no shortage of men now, more's the

pity. Feed her twice daily, see if we cannot make up for

any growth she may have been shorted, and whenever she is

awake I will start you on Longwing maneuvers. I don't know

if she can scorch herself, as they can with their own acid,

but we needn't find out by trial."

Granby nodded; he seemed not the least nonplussed at

answering to her. Neither did Tharkay, who had been

persuaded to stay on at least a little longer, as one of

the few of them with any influence upon the ferals at all.

He rather looked mostly amused, in his secretive way, once

past the inquiring glance which he had first cast at

Laurence: as Jane had insisted upon being taken to the

newcome dragons at once, there had been no chance for

Laurence to give Tharkay a private caution in advance of

their meeting. He did not reveal any surprise, however, but

only made her a polite bow, and performed the introductions

quite calmly.

Arkady and his band had made very little less confusion of

their own clearings than Iskierka, preferring to knock down

all the trees between and cluster together in a great heap.

The chill of the December air did not trouble them, used as

they were to the vastly colder regions of the Pamirs, but

they spoke disapprovingly of the dampness, and on

understanding that here before them was the senior officer

of the covert, at once demanded from her an accounting of

the promised cows, one apiece daily, by which they had been

lured into service.

"They make the position that if they do not happen to eat

the cows upon a given day, still they are owed the cattle,

which they may call in at a future time," Tharkay

explained, provoking Jane's deep laugh.

"Tell them they shall have as much as they like to eat on

any occasion, and if they are too suspicious for that to

satisfy them, we shall make them a tally: they may each of

them take one of these logs they have knocked about over to

the feeding pens, and mark it when they take a cow," Jane

said, more merry than offended at being met with such

negotiations. "Pray ask will they agree to a rate of

exchange, two hogs for a cow, or two sheep, should we bring

in some variety?"

The ferals put their heads together and muttered and hissed

and whistled amongst themselves, in a cacophony made

private only by the obscurity of their language, and

finally Arkady turned back and professed himself willing to

settle on the trade agreement, except that he insisted

goats should be three to a cow, they having some contempt

for that animal, more easily obtained in their former

homeland and likely there to be scrawny.

Jane bowed to him to seal the arrangement, and he bobbed

his head back, his expression deeply satisfied, and