Black Powder War

Chapter 6

THE SMALL IVORY fountain, many-jetted, flung off a fine cooling mist that gathered upon the orange-tree leaves and fruit hanging low over the pool, ripe and fragrant and trembling. In the vast palatial gardens below the terrace railing, Temeraire lay sun-dappled and drowsy after his substantial meal, and the little runners, having cleaned him off, were sleeping tucked against his side. The chamber itself was fairytale-lovely, tiles of lapis-blue and white laid upon the walls from floor to gilt-painted ceiling, shutters inlaid with mother-of-pearl, velvet-cushioned window seats, thick carpets in a thousand shades of red heaped over the floors, and in the center of the room a tall painted vase half the height of a man stood upon a low table, full of a profusion of flowers and vines. Laurence could gladly have hurled it across the room.

“It is the outside of enough,” Granby said, blazing away as he paced. “Fobbing us off with a pack of excuses, and then to heap on such vile insinuations, and as good as call this poor wretch Yarmouth a thief—”

Mustafa had been full of apology, of regret: the agreements had never been signed, he explained, fresh concerns having arisen to delay the matter; and as a consequence the payment had not yet been delivered when the ambassador had met with his accident. When Laurence had received these excuses with all the suspicion the circumstances commanded, and demanded at once to be taken to the ambassador’s residence and to speak with his staff, Mustafa had with an air of faint discomfort confided that upon the ambassador’s death, his servants had departed post-haste for Vienna, and one, his secretary James Yarmouth, had vanished entirely.

“I will not say I know any evil of him, but gold is the great tempter,” Mustafa had said, spreading his hands wide, his implications plain. “I am sorry, Captain, but you must understand we cannot bear the responsibility.”

“I do not believe a word of it; not a word,” Granby went on, furiously, “the notion they would send to us, in China, to come here with an agreement only half-made—”

“No, it is absurd,” Laurence agreed. “Lenton would have spoken quite differently in his orders, had the arrangement been uncertain in the least; they can only want to renege upon it, with as little embarrassment to themselves as possible.”

Mustafa had smiled and smiled relentlessly in the face of all Laurence’s objections, and repeated his apologies, and offered hospitality once again; with all the crewmen weary and thick with dust, and no alternative to hand, Laurence had accepted, supposing besides that they would only find it easier to work out the truth of the affair, and exert some influence to see matters set right, once ensconced in the city.

He and his crew had been settled into two elaborate kiosques upon the inner grounds, the buildings nestled amidst rich lawns vast enough for Temeraire to sleep in. The palace crowned the narrow spur of land where the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn together met the sea, and endless prospects showed in every direction during their descent: horizons full of ocean, and a great crowd of shipping on the water. Laurence only too late recognized that they had stepped into a gilded cage: the matchless views were so because the palace hill was encircled all around with high windowless walls that barred all communication with the outside world, and their quarters looked upon the sea through windows barred with iron.

From the air, the kiosques had seemed joined with the sprawling palace complex, but the connection proved only a roofed cloister, open to the air: all the doors and windows which might have led into the palace proper were locked and forbidding, black and shuttered against even the entry of their gaze. More of the black slaves stood guard at the foot of the terrace stairs, and in the gardens the Kazilik dragons lay in sinuously knotted heaps, their glittering yellow eyes slitted open and resting watchfully on Temeraire.

For all his genial welcome, Mustafa had vanished away as soon as he had seen them neatly locked up, with vague promises to return very soon. But the call to prayer had come thrice since then; they had explored the limits of their handsome prison twice over, and still there was no sign of his returning. The guards made no objections if any of them came down to speak with Temeraire, in the gardens just beneath the kiosques, but they shook their heads genially when Laurence pointed over their shoulders to the paved walkway that led towards the rest of the grounds.

Held at this remove, from the terraces and windows they could watch the life of the palace as much as they wished, a curious kind of frustration: other men walking about the grounds, busy and preoccupied; officials in high turbans, servants carrying trays, young pages darting back and forth with baskets and letters; once even a gentleman who looked like a medical man, long-bearded and in plain black clothing, who disappeared into a small kiosque of his own some distance away. Many looked over curiously at Laurence and his crew, the boys slowing in their progress to stare at the dragons sitting in the garden, but they made no answer if called-to, only hurrying on prudently.

“Look; do you suppose that is a woman, over there?” Dunne and Hackley and Portis were jostling one another for the glass, hanging nearly halfway over the terrace railing with twenty feet down to solid stone pavement, trying recklessly to peer across the garden: an official was speaking with a woman—or a man, or an orang-utang, so far as could be told from externals. She was wearing a veil not of heavy silk but dark, which was wrapped around her head and shoulders and left only her eyes uncovered; and despite the heat of the day her gown was covered with a long coat, reaching to her jewel-slippered feet, and a deep-slashed pocket in the front concealed even her hands from view.

“Mr. Portis,” Laurence said sharply; the older midshipman was actually putting fingers to his lips to whistle, “as you have nothing better to do, you will go below and see to digging Temeraire a fresh necessary; and when he has done with it you may fill it in again; at once, if you please.” Dunne and Hackley hastily lowered the glass as Portis slunk off abashed, attempting without much success an air of innocence; Tharkay silently relieved them of it, while Laurence added, “And you two gentlemen—”

He paused in mingled outrage and dismay to see Tharkay himself peering through the glass at the veiled woman; “Sir,” Laurence said, against his teeth, “I will thank you not to ogle the palace women either.”

“She is not a woman of the harem,” Tharkay said. “The harem quarters are to the south, beyond those high walls, and the women are not permitted outside; I assure you, Captain, we would not be seeing nearly so much of her, were she an odalisque.” He straightened away from the glass: the woman had turned to look at them, a pale narrow strip of skin all that the robes did not cover, only just large enough to leave her dark eyes exposed.

Thankfully she made no outcry, and in a moment she and the official had walked out of sight again. Tharkay shut up the glass and gave it to Laurence, and walked away, insouciant; Laurence closed his fist around the barrel. “You will go and ask Mr. Bell to find you some way to assist him with the newest leather he has to hand,” he said to Dunne and Hackley, restraining himself from giving them a sharper punishment duty; he would not make them scapegoat for Tharkay.

They made their grateful escape, and Laurence paced the terrace length again, stopping at the far end to look out over the city and the Golden Horn; dusk was descending: Mustafa would surely not come today.

“And there is the day wasted,” Granby said, joining him as the last call to prayer came: the raw straining voices of the muezzin mingled from distant minarets and near, one so close it might have been only on the other side of the high brick wall that divided their courtyard from the harem.

The call woke Laurence again at dawn: he had left the shutters all open for the breeze, and so that he might lift his head during the night and see Temeraire safe and asleep in the faint eldritch glow of the scattered lanterns hung on the palace walls. And once again they heard it five times over with still no communication: not a visit nor a word nor any sign that their existence was even acknowledged, beyond the meals which were brought them by a quick and silent handful of servants, there and gone before any questions could be asked them.

At Laurence’s request, Tharkay tried to bespeak the guards in Turkish, but they only shrugged inarticulate and opened their mouths to show where their tongues had been cut out, a piece of barbarity. When asked to take a letter, they shook their heads firmly, whether from unwillingness to leave their posts for such a purpose, or perhaps under instructions to keep them incommunicado.

“Do you suppose we could bribe them?” Granby said, when night began to come on, and still no word had come. “If only we could get out, a few of us: someone in this damned city must know what has happened to the ambassador’s staff; not all of them can have gone away.”

“We might; if we had anything to bribe them with,” Laurence said. “We are wretchedly short, John; I dare say they would sniff at what I can afford. I doubt it would see us out of the palace, when it would mean their positions if not their heads.”

“Then we might have Temeraire knock down a wall to let us out; at least that might draw some notice,” Granby said, not entirely joking, and flung himself down onto the nearest couch.

“Mr. Tharkay, do you translate for me again,” Laurence said, and went to address the guards once more; though at first they had tolerated their guest-prisoners with good humor, they were now grown visibly annoyed, this being the sixth time Laurence had accosted them over the course of the day. “Pray tell them we require some more oil for the lamps, and candles,” Laurence said to Tharkay, “also perhaps some soap, and other toilet articles,” improvising some small requests.

These presently, as he had hoped, brought one of the young pages they had seen from afar, to fetch and carry for them; the boy was sufficiently impressed at the offer of a silver coin to agree to convey a message to Mustafa. Having first sent him off to bring the candles and sundry, to forestall any suspicion on the part of the guards, Laurence sat down with pen and paper to compose as severe a formal letter as he could manage, which he hoped would convey to that smiling gentleman that he did not mean to sit quietly in this bower.

“I am not sure what you mean by the beginning of the third paragraph,” Temeraire said doubtfully, when Laurence read over the letter, written in French, to him.

“‘Whatever your design may be, in leaving unanswered all the questions which—’” Laurence began.

“Oh,” Temeraire said, “I think you want conception instead of dessin. Also, Laurence, I do not think you want to say you are his obedient domestique.”

“Thank you, my dear,” Laurence said, correcting the words, and guessing at the spelling of heuroo, before he folded up the missive and handed it over to the boy, who had now returned with a basket of candles and of small cakes of soap, heavily perfumed.

“I only hope he will not throw it in the fire,” Granby said, after the boy had trotted away, coin clutched in one fist, not very discreetly. “Or I suppose Mustafa might hurl it in himself.”

“We will not hear anything tonight, regardless,” Laurence said. “We had better sleep while we can. If we get no answer, we will have to think of making a dash for Malta tomorrow. They do not have much of a shore battery here, and I dare say they will answer us very differently if we come back with a first-rate and a couple of frigates behind us.”

“Laurence,” Temeraire called from outside, rousing him from a thick, too-real dream of sailing; Laurence sat up and rubbed his wet face: a change in the wind had carried the fountain-spray onto him during the night.

“Yes,” he answered, and went to wash in the fountain, still half-asleep; he went down into the gardens, nodding civilly to the yawning guards, and Temeraire nudged at him with interest.

“That is a nice smell,” he said, diverted, and Laurence realized he had washed with the perfumed soap.

“I will have to scrub it off later,” he said, dismayed. “Are you hungry?”

“I would not mind something to eat,” Temeraire said, “but I must tell you something: I have been talking to Bezaid and Sherazde, and they say their egg will hatch very soon.”

“Who?” Laurence said, puzzled, then stared at the pair of Kazilik dragons, who blinked their glossy eyes at him in return, with mild interest. “Temeraire,” he said, slowly, “do you mean that we are to have their egg?”

“Yes, and two others, but those have not started to harden,” Temeraire said. “I think,” he added. “They only know a little French, and a little of the dragon-language, but they have been telling me words in Turkish.”

Laurence paid this no attention, too staggered by the news; very nearly since any organized sort of dragon-breeding had begun, Britain had been trying to acquire a line of fire-breathers. A few of the Flamme-de-Gloire had been brought over after Agincourt, but the last had died out scarcely a century later, and since then there had been only failure after failure: France and Spain had naturally denied them, too-close neighbors to wish to yield so great an advantage, and for a long while the Turks had been no more eager to deal with infidels than the British with heathen.

“And we were in negotiations with the Inca, not twelve years ago,” Granby said, his face flushed bright with passionate excitement, “but it all came to nothing, in the end; we offered them a kingdom’s ransom, and they seemed pleased, then overnight they returned us all the silk and tea and guns we had brought them, and ran us out of the place.”

“How much did we offer to them, do you recall?” Laurence asked, and Granby named a sum which made him sit abruptly down. Sherazde, with an air of smugness, informed them in her broken French that her egg had commanded a higher price still, almost impossible to believe.

“Good God; how half such a sum was raised, I am at a loss to imagine,” Laurence said. “They might build half-a-dozen first-rates for the same price, and a pair of dragon transports besides.”

Temeraire was sitting up and very still, his tail wound tight around his body and his ruff bristling. “We are buying the eggs?” he said.

“Why—” Laurence was surprised; he had not before realized Temeraire did not understand the eggs were to be acquired for money. “We are, yes, but you see yourself that your acquaintances do not object to giving over their egg,” he said, glancing anxiously at the Kazilik pair, who indeed seemed unconcerned at being parted from their offspring.

But Temeraire dismissed this with an impatient flick of his tail. “Of course they do not mind that, they know we will take care of the egg,” he said. “But as you have told me yourself, if you buy a thing, then you own it, and may do as you like with it. If I buy a cow I may eat it, and if you buy an estate then we may live upon it, and if you buy me a jewel I may wear it. If eggs are property, then the dragons that hatch out of them are also, and it is no wonder that people treat us as though we are slaves.”

There was very little way to answer this; raised in an abolitionist household, Laurence understood without question that men ought not be bought and sold, and when put on terms of principle he could hardly disagree; however, there was plainly a vast difference in the condition of dragons and the unfortunate wretches who lived in bondage.

“It’s not as though we can make the dragonets do as we want, once they hatch,” Granby offered, a useful inspiration. “You could say that we are only buying the chance to persuade them to go into harness with us.”

But Temeraire said, with a militant gleam, “And if instead when hatched they wished to fly away, and come back here?”

“Oh, well,” Granby said, lamely, and looked awkward; naturally in such a case, the feral dragonet would be taken to the breeding-grounds instead.

“At least consider that in this case, we are taking them away to England, where you will have the opportunity of improving their condition,” Laurence tried as consolation, but Temeraire was not so easily mollified, and curled brooding in the garden to consider the problem.

“Well, he has taken the bit in his teeth and no mistake,” Granby said to Laurence, with a worried querying note in his voice, as they went back inside.

“Yes,” Laurence said dismally. He did have some expectation of winning real improvement in the comforts of the dragons, once back home; he was sure Admiral Lenton and the other senior admirals of the Corps would be quite willing to adopt all such measures which their authority should allow. Laurence had with him plans for a pavilion in the Chinese style, with the heating-stones beneath and the pipe-fed running fountains, which had been so much to Temeraire’s liking; Gong Su might easily train others in the art of dragon cookery, and the Allegiance was carrying home besides the reading frames and sand writing tables, which surely could be adapted to Western usage. Privately Laurence doubted whether most dragons would have any interest; Temeraire was unique not only in his gift for language but his passion for books. But whatsoever interest there was could be satisfied easily and without great cost, and could hardly provoke any objections.

But beyond these measures, which might be undertaken within the discretion and the funds of the Corps, Government was hardly likely to go with a good-will, and the degree of coercion required to force anything more, Laurence could not bear to endorse. A mutiny of dragons would terrify all the country, and surely injure the cause as much as promote it; and fix the Ministry in the prejudice that dragons were not to be depended upon. The effects of such a conflict upon the prosecution of the war were hardly to be overstated, and as distraction alone might prove fatal: there were not enough dragons in England for those available to be worrying more about their pay and their rights in law than about their duty.

He could not help but wonder if another captain, a proper aviator and better-trained, might have kept Temeraire from growing so preoccupied and discontented, and channeled his energies better. He would have liked to ask Granby if such difficulties were at all common, if there were any advice to be had on the matter, but he could not be asking a subordinate for help in managing Temeraire; and in any case, he was not sure advice would be of use any longer. To call it slavery, when a dragon egg was purchased at a cost of half-a-million pounds, and the only change whether it should be hatched in England rather than in the Sublime Porte, was unreasonable as a practical matter, and all the philosophy in the world could not change that.

“If the egg has begun to harden, how long do you expect we have?” he asked Granby instead, putting his hand up to the wind that came in at the archway facing the sea, and calculating in his mind how long it should be to bring a ship from Malta; they could reach the island in three days’ flying, he felt sure, if Temeraire was well-rested and well-fed beforehand.

“Well, certainly it is down to weeks, but whether it is three or ten I cannot tell you without I see the thing, and even then I could be wrong: you will have to ask Keynes for that,” Granby said. “But it’s not enough to lay our hands upon the egg at the last moment, you know. This dragonet shan’t be like Temeraire and pop out knowing three tongues at once, I never heard of anything like; we must get hold of the egg and start it on English straight off.”

“Oh, Hell,” Laurence said, dismayed, and let fall his hand; he had not even considered the matter of language. He had captured Temeraire’s egg scarcely a week before hatching, and had not known enough to be surprised to find him speaking English, more astonished that a new-hatched creature could speak at all. Yet another gap in his training; and another fresh source of urgency.

“It would give the Sultan a strange appearance among the ranks of rulers,” Laurence said, only just contriving to present an appearance of equanimity, “to tolerate the disappearance of half-a-million pounds meant for his treasury and the death of an ambassador within his territory, with no inquiry; mere courtesy to an ally would dictate greater concern, sir, at the circumstances which you have described to me.”

“But, Captain, I assure you, all inquiries are being made,” Mustafa said, in great earnest, and tried to press a platter of honey-soaked pastry upon him.

Mustafa had at last appeared shortly after the hour of noon, pleading as excuse for his absence an unexpected affair of state which had drawn away his attention; by way of apology he had come accompanied by their dinner, and an extravagant entertainment besides. Two dozen servants or more bustled around with great noise, setting rugs and cushions for them upon the terrace, all around the marble pool, and ferrying great platters from the kitchens, laden with fragrant pilaff and heaps of mashed aubergines, cabbage leaves and green peppers stuffed with meat and rice, skewers and thin-sliced roasted meats redolent of rich smoke.

Temeraire, his head craned over the railing to observe the event, sniffed these with especial appreciation, and, despite having been well-fed on two tender lambs only an hour earlier, surreptitiously cleared in a few bites a serving-dish set down for a moment within his reach, and left the servants staring at the empty platter, its gold scraped and dented by his teeth.

In case this should have proved inadequate distraction, Mustafa had brought with him musicians, who at once set up a great noise, and a crowd of dancing-girls in loose and translucent pantaloons. Their gyrations were so plainly indecent, and so little concealed by the veils which they swung round themselves, that Laurence could only blush for them, though their performance was much applauded by many of his younger officers. The riflemen were the most outrageous: Portis had learnt his lesson, at least, but Dunne and Hackley, younger and more exuberant, were comporting themselves shamelessly, trying to catch at the trailing veils and whistling approval; Dunne even went so far as to get up onto one knee and reach out a hand before Lieutenant Riggs caught his ear smartly and pulled him down.

Laurence was in no danger of being so led astray; the women were beautiful, white-limbed and dark-eyed Circassians, but his wrath at these plain efforts to keep them from business was rather more in force than any other base emotion, and superseded any temptation he might otherwise have felt. But when he tried at first to speak to Mustafa, one went so far as to approach him more directly, her arms spread wide to display her lovely breasts to good effect, these being covered inadequately and moving in counter-point to her hips. Gracefully she seated herself upon his couch and stretched her slender arms out towards him in blatant invitation; an effective bar to any conversation, and it was no part of his character to thrust a woman forcibly away.

Fortunately, his virtue had an effective guardian: Temeraire put his head down to inspect her with jealous suspicion, eyes narrowing further at her many dazzling chains of gold, and snorted; the girl, unprepared for such a reception, sprang hurriedly up from the divan and back to the safety of her fellows.

At last Laurence was able to press Mustafa for some relief; only to have the pasha put him off with vague assurances that the investigations would bear fruit “soon, very soon, of course; although the labors of government are many, Captain, I am certain you understand.”

“Sir,” Laurence said bluntly, “I understand well enough you may drag things out to suit you; but when you have delayed too long and rendered all discussion moot, what hold you presently have on our patience will be gone, and you may find such treatment will merit an answer you will not enjoy receiving.”

This pointed remark was as near as he felt he could come to a threat, or ought to; no minister of the Sultan’s could fail to understand how very vulnerable the city was to blockade or even attack by sea, with the Navy in easy striking distance at Malta. Indeed, for once Mustafa was left without a ready answer, and his mouth was pressed tight.

“I am no diplomat, sir,” Laurence added, “and I cannot wrap my meaning up in fine language. When you know as well as do I that time is of the essence, and yet I am left to cool my heels to no purpose, I do not know what to call it but deliberate; and I cannot easily believe that my ambassador dead and his secretary missing, all his staff should have unceremoniously departed, though knowing to expect us and with so vast a sum unaccounted for.”

But to this, Mustafa sat up and spread his hands. “How may I convince you, Captain? Will you be satisfied to visit his residence, and inspect for yourself?”

Laurence paused, taken aback; his intention had been to press Mustafa for just such a liberty, and he had not expected to have it offered him unsolicited. “I would indeed be glad of the opportunity,” he answered, “and to speak with whatever servants of his household remain in the neighborhood.”

“I do not like it in the least,” Granby said, when a pair of mute guards arrived shortly after their dinner, to escort Laurence on the foray. “You ought to remain here; let me go instead with Martin and Digby, and we will bring back anyone I can find.”

“They are not likely to permit you to bring men freely into the palace; nor can they be so lost to reason as to murder us in the street, with Temeraire and two dozen men here to carry away the news,” Laurence said. “We will do very well.”

“I do not like your going away, either,” Temeraire said discontentedly. “I do not see why I cannot come.” He had grown used to walking about freely in Peking, and so long as they had been in the wilderness, of course, his movements also had not been restricted.

“I am afraid the conditions here are not as they were in China,” Laurence said. “The streets of Istanbul will not admit of your passage, and if they did we would begin a panic among the populace. Now; where is Mr. Tharkay?”

There was a moment of general silence and confusion, heads turning all around: Tharkay was nowhere to be seen. A hurried questioning made sure that no one had seen him since the previous evening, and then Digby pointed out his small bedroll neatly tucked away and still bound up among their baggage, unused. Laurence regarded it with a tight-lipped expression. “Very well; we cannot delay in hopes he will come back. Mr. Granby, if he returns, you will put him under guard until I have opportunity to speak with him.”

“Yes, sir,” Granby said, darkly.

Certain phrases which might form a part of that conversation sprang forcefully to Laurence’s mind, as he stood in bafflement outside the elegant ambassador’s residence: the windows tight-shuttered, the door barred, dust and rat-droppings beginning to collect upon the front stoop. The guards only looked at him uncomprehendingly when he tried to make gestures suggesting the servants, and though he went so far as to apply at the neighboring houses, he found no one who understood a word of English or French, nor even his wretched gasping scraps of Latin.

“Sir,” Digby said, low, when Laurence came back unsuccessful once more, from the third house, “I think that window on the side there is unlocked, and I dare say I could scramble in, if Mr. Martin would give me a leg up.”

“Very good; only mind you do not break your neck,” Laurence said; he and Martin together heaved Digby up close enough to reach the balcony. Squirreling up over an iron railing was no great difficulty for a boy raised to clamber all over a dragon’s back in mid-flight, and though the window stuck halfway, the young ensign was still slim enough he could wriggle through.

The guards made an uneasy wordless protest when Digby opened the front door from within, but Laurence ignored them and went inside, Martin at his back. They stepped over straw and tracked dirt in the hallway, marks of bare dusty feet on the floor, signs of a hasty packing and departure. Inside the rooms were dark and echoing even when the shutters were thrown open, sheets draped across furnishings all left in place, the ghostly quality of a house abandoned and waiting, and the low muttering tick-tick of the great clock beside the staircase queerly loud in the hush.

Laurence went upstairs and through the chambers; but though there were some papers scattered and left here and there, these were little more than scraps left from packing: torn rags and fragments of kindling paper. One leaf he found beneath the writing-desk in a large bedchamber, in a lady’s hand, an excerpt of a cheerful and ordinary letter home, full of news of her small children and curious stories of the foreign city, broken off mid-page and never finished; he put it down again, sorry to have intruded.

A smaller chamber down the hall, Laurence thought must have been Yarmouth’s; it seemed as though the occupant had stepped out only for an hour: two coats hanging with a clean shirt, a suit of evening wear, a pair of buckled shoes; a bottle of ink and a pen lying trimmed upon the desk, with books left on the shelves and a small cameo left inside the desk: a young woman’s face. But the papers had been taken away: or at least, there were none left which had any useful intelligence.

He went down again none the wiser; and Digby and Martin had met with no better luck belowstairs. At the least there was no sign of foul play, or of looting, though everywhere an untidy mess and all the furniture left behind; they had gone in a great hurry, certainly, but not it seemed by force. Her husband so suddenly dead and his secretary vanished, under such irregular circumstances and with so vast a sum of gold involved: caution alone might have reasonably driven the ambassador’s wife to take her children and the remains of her household and retreat, rather than remain alone and friendless in a city so foreign and far away from allies.

But a letter to Vienna might take weeks to go and bring back a reply; they would not have time to learn the truth, not before the egg was irretrievably lost to them, and there was certainly nothing here to disprove Mustafa’s story. Disheartened, Laurence left the house, the guards beckoning them impatiently on, and Digby barred the door again from within and scrambled down from the balcony to rejoin them.

“Thank you, gentlemen, I think we have learned all we can,” Laurence said; there was no sense in letting Martin and Digby share in his own sense of dismay, and as best he could he concealed his anxiety as they followed in the guards’ train back towards the river. Yet he was deep in a brown study, and gave little attention to their surroundings but to watch they did not lose the guards in the enormous crowd. The ambassador’s residence had stood in the Beyoglu quarter across the Golden Horn, full of foreigners and tradesmen; there was a great press of people in the streets, strangely narrow after the broad avenues of Peking, and a din of voices calling: merchants outside their storefronts beckoning the instant they caught the eye of any passerby, trying to draw them inside.

But the crowd fell abruptly off, and the noise with it, as they came nearer to the shore: houses and shops all shuttered together, though now and again Laurence saw a face look out momentarily from behind a curtain, peering up at the sky, then vanish again as quickly. Above them broad shadows flickered by, blotting out for a moment the sun: dragons wheeling overhead, so near their bellmen could be counted by the head. The guards looked up apprehensively, and hurried them onward, though Laurence would have liked to stop for a better look, to see what they were about, lingering over so populous an area, and so crushing all the commerce of the day. Only a handful of men were to be seen in the streets beneath the shadows of the dragons, and those hurrying by anxious and quick; one dog stood barking with more courage than sense, its piercing voice carrying across the expanse of the harbor; the dragons paid it no more notice than a man might a buzzing fly, calling to one another aloft.

Their chief ferryman was waiting uneasily, passing the end of his anchor-cable through his hands, on the verge perhaps of abandoning them; he beckoned hurriedly while they came down the hill. Laurence turned himself around in the boat to see, as they drew away across the river: at first he thought the dragons, perhaps half-a-dozen of them, were only sporting in the air. But then he saw there were thick cables stretching down over the harbor, and the dragons were hauling upon these, drawing up whole waggons which carried, unmistakable, the barrels of long guns.

When they had reached the far shore of the river, Laurence leapt out ahead of the guards and went to the dockside to look more closely: already he could tell these were no trivial works. A host of low-bellied barges stood in the harbor, swarmed with some hundreds of men arranging the next waggon-loads, and a crowd of horses and mules somehow being kept obedient despite the dragons so nearby; perhaps because the dragons were above and out of their direct sight. Not only guns, but cannonballs, barrels of powder, heaps of brick; such a mass of matériel Laurence would have allowed weeks to shift it up the steep hill, all of it traveling upwards quick as winking. And higher upon the hillside itself, the dragons were lowering the massive cannon-barrels into their waiting wooden cradles, as easily as a pair of men might move a plank of wood.

Laurence was by no means the only curious observer; a great press of natives of the city were gathered along the docks, staring at the scene, and whispering amongst themselves doubtfully; a company of Janissaries, in their plumed helmets, stood frowning not a dozen yards away, with their hands restless and toying with their carbines. One enterprising young man was going about offering the use of a glass to the onlookers, for a small fee; it was not very powerful, and the lenses mazed, but good enough for a closer look.

“Ninety-six-pounders, unless I quite mistake it, maybe so many as twenty of them, and I think there were as many more already ensconced on the Asian coast. This harbor will be a death-trap for any ship that comes in range,” Laurence said grimly to Granby, as he washed the dust of the streets from his face and hands in the basin set on the wall, and ducked his head in the water for good measure, wringing his hair out with some savagery: soon he would resort to hacking off the ends with his sword, he thought, if he did not come to a barber; it had always refused to grow long enough for a proper queue, only enough to be an irritation and drip endlessly when wet. “And they were not at all sorry to let me see it; those guards were urging us along all the day, but they were pleased enough for me to stop and stare as long as I liked.”

“Mustafa might as well have thumbed his nose at us,” Granby agreed. “And Laurence, I am afraid that is not the only—well, you will see for yourself,” and together they went around to the garden-side: the Kazilik dragons had gone, but in their stead another dozen dragons had been set around Temeraire, so that the garden was grown crowded, and a couple of them were obliged even to perch atop the backs of others.

“Oh, no; they are all quite friendly, and have only come to talk,” Temeraire said earnestly; he was already making himself understood somehow in a mélange of French scattered with Turkish and the dragon-language, and with some labor and repetition he presented Laurence to the Turkish dragons, who all nodded their heads to him politely.

“They will still give us no end of difficulty if we need to leave with any haste,” Laurence said, eyeing them sidelong; Temeraire was fast, very fast, for a dragon of his size; but the couriers at least could certainly outdistance him, and Laurence rather thought a couple of the middle-weight beasts might be able to match his speed long enough to slow him for a dragon more up to his fighting-weight.

But they were at least not unpleasant guard-dogs, and proved informative. “Yes; some of them have been telling me about the harbor works, they are here in the city helping,” Temeraire said, when the operations Laurence had seen were described to him; and the visiting dragons willingly confirmed a good deal of what Laurence had surmised: they were fortifying the harbor, with a great many cannon. “It sounds very interesting; I would like to go and see, if we might.”

“I would dearly like a closer look myself,” Granby said. “I have no idea how they are managing it with horses involved. It is the very devil of a time having cattle around dragons; we count ourselves lucky not to stampede them, much less to get any useful work out of them. It is not enough to keep them out of sight; a horse can smell a dragon more than a mile off.”

“I doubt Mustafa will be inclined to let us inspect their works very closely,” Laurence said. “To let us have a glimpse across the harbor to impress upon us the futility of attack is one thing; to show all his hand would be something else. Has there been any word from him, any further explanation?”

“Not a peep, and neither hide nor hair of Tharkay, either, since you left,” Granby said.

Laurence nodded, and sat down heavily upon the stairs. “We cannot keep going through all these ministers and official channels,” he said finally. “Time is too short. We must demand an audience with the Sultan; his intercession must be the surest way to gain their quick cooperation.”

“But if he has let them put us off, this far—”

“I cannot credit an intention on his part to wreck all relations,” Laurence said, “not with Bonaparte nearer his doorstep than ever, since Austerlitz; and if he would be as pleased to keep the eggs, that is not as much to say he would choose them over an open and final breach. But so long as his ministers serve as intercessionaries, he has not committed himself and his state: he can always blame it upon them; if indeed it is not some sort of private political tangle behind these delays to begin with.”

Chapter 7

LAURENCE OCCUPIED HIS evening with writing a fresh letter, this one still more impassioned and addressed directly to the Grand Vezir. He was only able to dispatch it by the cost of two pieces of silver instead of one: the boy servant had grown conscious of the strength of his position, and kept his hand outstretched firmly when Laurence put the first piece into his palm, staring silent but expectantly until Laurence at last set another down; an impudence Laurence was powerless to answer otherwise.

The letter brought no answer that night; but in the morning, at first he thought he had at last won some reply, for a tall and impressive man came walking briskly and with energy into their courtyard shortly past first light, trailed by several of the black eunuch guards. He created something of a noise, and then came out to the gardens where Laurence was sitting with Temeraire and laboring over yet another letter.

The newcomer was plainly a military officer of some rank; an aviator, by his long sweeping coat of leather gorgeously embroidered around the borders, and by the short-trimmed hair that set the Turkish aviators apart from their turbaned fellows; and a gifted one, by the sparkling jeweled chelengk upon his chest, a singular mark of honor among the Turks, rarely bestowed, which Laurence recognized from its having been granted Lord Nelson after the victory of the Nile.

The officer mentioned Bezaid’s name, which made Laurence suspect him the Kazilik male’s captain, but his French was not good, and at first Laurence thought he was speaking over-loud to try and make himself understood. He went on at length, his words tumbling together, and turned to address the watching dragons noisily also.

“But I have not said anything that is not the truth,” Temeraire said, indignantly, and Laurence, still puzzling out the words he had managed to pick out of the flood, realized the officer was deeply, furiously agitated, and his spitting words rather a sign of high temper than inarticulate speech.

The officer actually shook his fist in Temeraire’s teeth and said to Laurence violently, in French, “He tells more lies, and—” Here he dragged his hand across his throat, a gesture requiring no translation. Having finished this incoherent speech, he turned and stormed out of the garden; and in his wake a handful of the dragons sheepishly leapt into the air and flew away: plainly they were not under any orders to guard Temeraire at all.

“Temeraire,” Laurence said, in the following silence, “what have you been saying to them?”

“I have only been telling them about property,” Temeraire said, “and how they ought to be paid, and not need to go to war unless they wish it, but might do more work such as they are doing upon the harbor, or some other sort of labor, which might be more interesting, and then they could earn money for jewels and food, and go about the city as they liked—”

“Oh, good God,” Laurence said, with a groan; he could imagine very well how these communications would have been viewed by a Turkish officer whose dragon expressed a desire not to go into battle and to take up some other profession which Temeraire might have suggested from his experience in China, such as poetry or nursemaiding. “Pray send the rest of them away, at once; or I dare say every officer of the Turkish corps in reach will come and rail at us in turn.”

“I do not care if they do,” Temeraire said obstinately. “If he had stayed, I should have had a great deal to say to him. If he cared for his dragon, he would want him treated well, and to have liberty.”

“You cannot be proselytizing now,” Laurence said. “Temeraire, we are guests here, and very nearly supplicants; they can deny us the eggs and make all our work to come here quite useless, and surely you see that they are putting obstacles enough in our path, without we give them any further cause to be difficult. We must rather conciliate the good-will of our hosts than offend them.”

“Why ought we conciliate the men at the dragons’ expense?” Temeraire said. “The eggs are theirs, after all, and indeed, I do not see why we are not negotiating with them, rather.”

“They do not tend their own eggs, or manage their hatching; you know they have left the eggs to their captains, and given over their handling,” Laurence said. “Else I should be delighted to address them; they could scarcely be less reasonable than our hosts,” he added with some frustration. “But as matters stand, we are at the mercy of the Turks, and not their dragons.”

Temeraire was silent, though his tail twitching rapidly betrayed his agitation. “But they have never had the opportunity to understand their own condition, nor that there might be a better; they are as ignorant as I myself was, before I saw China, and if they do not learn that much, how would anything ever change?”

“You will accomplish no change solely by making them discontented and offending their captains,” Laurence said. “But in any case, our duty to home and to the war effort must come first. A Kazilik alone, on our side of the Channel, may mean the difference between invasion and security, and tip the balance of war; we can hardly weigh any concerns against such a potential advantage.”

“But—” He stopped, and scratched at his forehead with the side of his claw. “But how will matters at all be different, once we are at home? If men will be upset at giving dragons liberty, would this not interfere with the war in England, too, and not only by keeping us from the eggs here? Or, if some British dragons did not want to fight anymore, that would hurt the war also.”

He peered down with open curiosity at Laurence, waiting an answer; an answer which Laurence could not give, for indeed he felt precisely so, and he could not lie and say otherwise, not in the face of a direct question. He could think of nothing to say which would satisfy Temeraire, and as his silence stretched, Temeraire’s ruff slowly drooped down, flattening against his neck, and his tendrils hung limply.

“You do not want me to say these things when we are at home, either,” Temeraire said quietly. “Have you only been humoring me? You think it is all foolishness, and we ought not make any demands.”

“No, Temeraire,” Laurence said, very low. “Not foolishness at all, you have all the right in the world to liberty; but selfish—yes; I must call it so.”

Temeraire flinched, and drew his head back a little, bewildered; Laurence looked down at his own tight-wrung hands; there could be no softening of it now, and he must pay for his long delay of the inevitable, at an usurious rate of interest.

“We are at war,” he said, “and our case is a desperate one. Against us is ranged a general who has never been defeated, at the head of a country with twice over and more the native resources of our own small British Isles. You know Bonaparte has once massed an invasion force; he can do it again, if only he should subdue the Continent to his satisfaction, and perhaps with more success in a second attempt. In such circumstances, to begin a campaign for private benefit, which should have material risks of injuring the war effort, in my opinion can bear no other name; duty requires we put the concerns of the nation above our own.”

“But,” Temeraire protested, in a voice as small as could be produced from his deep chest, “but it is not for my own benefit, but for that of all the dragons, that I wish to press for change.”

“If the war be lost, what will anything else matter, or whatever progress you have made at the expense of such a loss?” Laurence said. “Bonaparte will tyrannize over all Europe, and no one will have any liberty at all, men or dragons.”

Temeraire made no answer; his head drooped over his forelegs, curling in on himself.

“I beg you, my dear, only to have patience,” Laurence said after a long and painful moment of silence, aching to see him so downcast; and wishing he might in honesty recall his own words. “I do promise you, we will make a beginning; once we are home in England, we will find friends who will listen to us, and I hope I may have some small influence to call upon also. There are many real advances,” he added, a little desperately, “practical improvements, which can be made without any unhappy effect upon the progress of the war; and with these examples to open the way, I am confident you will soon find a happier reception for your more lavish ideas, a better success at the cost only of time.”

“But the war must come first,” Temeraire said, low.

“Yes,” Laurence said, “—forgive me; I would not for the world give you pain.”

Temeraire shook his head a little, and leaned over to nuzzle him briefly. “I know, Laurence,” he said, and rose up to go and speak to the other dragons, who were still gathered behind them in the garden, watching; and when he had seen them all flit away again, he padded away with head bowed low to curl himself brooding in the shade of the cypress-trees. Laurence went inside and sat watching him through the window-lattice, wondering wretchedly if Temeraire would have been happier, after all, to stay the rest of his days in China.

“You could tell him—” Granby said, but he stopped and shook his head. “No, it won’t do,” he agreed. “I am damned sorry, Laurence, but I can’t see how you can sweeten it. You would not credit the stupid display in Parliament anytime we ask for funds only to keep up a covert or two, or get some better provisions for them; even if we only start building them pavilions, we will have a second war at home on our hands, and that is the least of his notions.”

Laurence looked at him. “Will it hurt your chances?” he asked, quietly; these could not be very good in any case, with more than a year so far from home, out from under the eye of the senior officers who decided which lieutenants should be allowed a chance to put a hatchling into harness, not with ten eager men or more to every egg.

“I hope I am not so selfish a dog as to cavil for a reason such as that,” Granby said with spirit. “I never knew a fellow to get an egg who was forever worrying about it; pray don’t consider it. Damned few fellows who come into the Corps fresh, like me, ever get their step; there are too many dragons who go by inheritance, and the admirals like to have fellows from Corps families. But if I ever have a boy, now I am far enough along I can give him a leg up, or one of my nephews; that is good enough for me, and serving with a prime goer like Temeraire.”

But he could not quite keep a wistful note from his voice; of course he would want his own dragon, and Laurence was certain that service as first lieutenant aboard a heavy-weight like Temeraire would ordinarily have meant a very good opportunity. Consideration for Granby was not an argument which could be made to Temeraire himself, of course, being a wholly unfair sort of pressure. On Laurence, however, it weighed heavily; he had been himself the beneficiary of a great deal of influence in his naval service, much of it even earned by merit, and he considered it a point of honor to do properly by his own officers.

He went outside. Temeraire had retreated further within the gardens; when Laurence at last came on him, Temeraire was still sitting curled quietly, his distress betrayed only by the furrows which he had gouged deep in the ground before him. His head was lowered upon his forelegs, and his eyes distant and narrow-slitted; the ruff nearly flat against his neck, sorrowful.

Laurence had no very clear notion of what to say, only wishing desperately to see him less unhappy, and almost willing to lie again if it would not hurt him the more. He stepped closer, and Temeraire lifted his head and looked at him; they neither of them spoke, but he went to Temeraire’s side and put his hand on him, and Temeraire made a place in the crook of his foreleg for Laurence to sit.

A dozen nightingales were singing, pent in some nearby aviary; no other sound disturbed them a long while, and then Emily came running through the garden and calling, “Sir, sir,” until panting she reached them and said, “Sir, pray come, they want to take Dunne and Hackley and hang them.”

Laurence stared, leapt down from Temeraire’s arm, and dashed back up the stairs to the court, Temeraire sitting up and putting his head anxiously over the terrace railing: nearly all the crew were out in the arched cloister, figuring in a wild noisy struggle with their own door guards and several other palace eunuchs: men of far greater position, judging by their golden-hilted scimitars and rich garb, and of more powerful mien, bull-necked and plainly not mutes, with furious imprecations flying from their lips as they wrestled slighter aviators to the ground.

Dunne and Hackley were in the thick of it; the two young riflemen were panting and fighting against the grip of the heavy-set men who clutched at them. “What the devil do you all mean by this?” Laurence bellowed, and let his voice carry over their heads; Temeraire added emphasis with his own rumbling growl, and the struggle subsided: the aviators fell back, and the guards stared up at Temeraire with expressions to suggest they would have gone pale if they could. They did not loose their captives, but at least did not attempt at once to drag them away.

“Now then,” Laurence said grimly, “what goes toward here; Mr. Dunne?” He and Hackley hung their heads and said nothing, an answer in itself; plainly they had engaged in some sort of skylarking, and disturbed the guards.

“Go and fetch Hasan Mustafa Pasha,” Laurence said to one of their own guards, a fellow he recognized, and repeated the name a few times over, the man glancing reluctantly at the others; abruptly one of the stranger eunuchs, a tall and imposing man in a high turban, snow-white against his dark skin and adorned by a sizable ruby set in gold, spoke commandingly to the guard; at this the mute at last nodded and set off down the stairs, hurrying away towards the rest of the palace grounds.

Laurence turned around. “You will answer me, Mr. Dunne, at once.”

“Sir, we didn’t mean any harm,” Dunne said, “we only thought, we thought—” He looked at Hackley, but the other rifleman was dumb and staring, pale under his freckled skin, no help. “We only went up over the roof, sir, and then we thought we might have a look round at the rest of the place, and—and then those fellows started chasing us, and we got over the wall again and ran back here, and tried to get back inside.”

“I see,” Laurence said, coldly, “and you thought you would do this without application to myself or Mr. Granby, as to the wisdom of this course of action.”

Dunne swallowed and let his head fall again. There was an uneasy, uncomfortable silence, a long wait; but not so very long, before Mustafa came around the corner at a rapid clip, the guard leading him, and his face red and mottled with haste and anger. “Sir,” Laurence said, forestalling him, “My men without permission left their posts; I regret that they should have caused a disturbance—”

“You must hand them over,” Mustafa said. “They shall at once be put to death: they attempted to enter the seraglio.”

Laurence said nothing a moment, while Dunne and Hackley hunched themselves still lower and darted their eyes at his face anxiously. “Did they trespass upon the privacy of the women?”

“Sir, we never—” Dunne began.

“Be silent,” Laurence said savagely.

Mustafa spoke to the guards; the chief eunuch beckoned forward one of his men, who answered in a voluble flow. “They looked in upon them, and made to them beckoning gestures through the window,” Mustafa said, turning back. “More than sufficient insult: it is forbidden that any man but the Sultan should look upon the women of the harem and have intercourse with them; only the eunuchs, otherwise, may speak with them.”

Temeraire, listening to this, snorted forcefully enough to blow the fountain-spray into their faces. “That is very silly,” he said hotly. “I am not having any of my crew put to death, and anyway I do not see why anyone should be put to death for talking to someone else at all; it is not as though that could hurt anyone.”

Mustafa did not try to answer him, but instead turned a narrow measured look on Laurence. “I trust you do not mean to thus defy the Sultan’s law, Captain, and give offense; you have, I think, had something to say on the subject of courtesy between our nations before.”

“On that subject, sir—” Laurence said, angry at this bald-faced attempt at pressure; and then swallowed the words which leapt to his tongue: such as a pointed remark that Mustafa had been quick enough to come at once on this occasion, though previous entreaties had found him so occupied he could not spare a moment.

Instead he controlled himself, and said after a moment, “Sir, I think perhaps your guard may have from zeal thought more transpired than did in fact occur; I dare say my officers did not see the women at all, but only were calling in hopes of catching sight of them. That is a great folly; and you may be sure,” he added, with heavy emphasis, “that they will suffer punishment for it; but to hand them over to death for it, I will not do, not on the word of a witness who has every cause to accuse them of doing rather more than less than they did, from a natural desire of protecting his charges from insult.”

Mustafa, frowning, appeared ready to dispute further; Laurence added, “If they had outraged the virtue of any of the women, I would without hesitation deal with them according to your notion of justice; but so uncertain a circumstance, with a single witness to speak against them, must argue for a degree of mercy.”

He did not move his hand to the hilt of his sword, nor signal to his men; but as best he could without turning his head, he considered their positions, and the disposal of their baggage, most of which had been stowed away inside the kiosques; if the Turks wished to seize Dunne and Hackley by force, he should have to order the men aboard directly, and leave all behind: if half-a-dozen dragons got into the air before Temeraire was aloft, it would be all up with them.

“Mercy is a great virtue,” Mustafa said finally, “and indeed it would be sorrowful to mar relations between our countries by unhappy and false accusations. I am sure,” he added, looking at Laurence significantly, “that you would grant an equal presentiment of innocence in any reverse case.”

Laurence pressed his lips together. “You may rely upon it,” he said, through his teeth, well aware he had committed himself to at least tolerate the inadequacies of the Turkish explanations so long as he had no proof of the reverse. But there was very little choice; he would not see two young officers under his care put to death for kissing their hands to a handful of girls through a window, dearly as he would have liked to wring their necks.

Mustafa’s mouth turned up at the corner, and he inclined his head. “I believe we understand one another, Captain; we will leave their correction to you, then, and I trust you will ensure no similar incident occurs: gentleness shown once is mercy, shown twice is folly.”

He collected the guards and led them away into the grounds, not without some low and angry protest on their part; there were some sighs of relief as they at last reluctantly went out of sight, and a couple of the other riflemen went so far as to clap Dunne and Hackley on the back: behavior which had at once to be stopped. “That will be enough,” Laurence said dangerously. “Mr. Granby, you will note for the log that Mr. Dunne and Mr. Hackley are turned out of the flight crew, and you will put their names in the ground-crew roll.”

Laurence had no very good idea whether an aviator might so be turned before the mast, as it were; but his expression did not allow of argument, and he did not receive any, only Granby’s quiet, “Yes, sir.” A harsh sentence, and it would look ugly upon their records even after they had been restored to their positions, as Laurence meant to do once they had learned a lesson. But he had little other choice, if they were to be punished; he could call no court-martial here, so far from home, and they were too old to be started with a cane. “Mr. Pratt, take these men in irons; Mr. Fellowes, I trust our supply of leather will allow you to prepare a lash.”

“Aye, sir,” Fellowes said, clearing his throat uncomfortably.

“But Laurence, Laurence,” Temeraire said into complete silence, the only one who would have dared intercede. “Mustafa and those guards have gone, you need not flog Dunne and Hackley now—”

“They deserted their posts and willfully risked all the success of our enterprise, all for the satisfaction of the most base and carnal impulses,” Laurence said flatly. “No; do not speak further in their defense, Temeraire: any court-martial would hang them for it, and high spirits make no excuse; they knew better.”

He saw with some grim approval the young men flinching, and nodded shortly. “Who was on guard when they left?” he asked, surveying the rest of the crew.

Eyes dropped all around; then young Salyer stepped forward and said, “I was, sir,” in a trembling voice, which cracked mid-word.

“Did you see them go?” Laurence asked quietly.

“Yes, sir,” Salyer whispered.

“Sir,” Dunne said hurriedly, “sir, we told him to keep quiet, that it was only for a lark—”

“That will be quite enough, Mr. Dunne,” Granby said.

Salyer himself did not make excuses; and he was indeed a boy, only lately made midwingman, though tall and gangly with his adolescent growth. “Mr. Salyer, as you cannot be trusted to keep watch, you are reduced to ensign,” Laurence said. “Go and cut a switch from one of those trees, and go to my quarters.” Salyer stumbled away hiding his face, which beneath his hand was blotchy red.

To Dunne and Hackley, Laurence turned and said, “Fifty lashes each; and you may call yourselves damned lucky. Mr. Granby, we will assemble in the garden for punishment at the stroke of eleven; see to it the bell is rung.”

He went to his kiosque, and when Salyer came gave him ten strokes; it was a paltry count, but the boy had foolishly cut the switch from springy green wood, far more painful and more like to cut the skin, and the boy would be humiliated if he was driven to weeping. “That will do; see you do not forget this,” Laurence said, and sent him away, before the trembling gasps had broken into tears.

Then he drew out his best clothes; he still had no better coat than the Chinese garment, but he set Emily to polish his boots fresh, and Dyer to press his neckcloth, while he went out and shaved himself over the small hand-basin. He put on his dress-sword and his best hat, then went out again and found the rest of the crew assembling in their Sunday clothing, and makeshift frames of bare signal-flag shafts thrust deep into the ground. Temeraire hovered anxiously, shifting his weight from side to side, and plowing up the earth.

“I am sorry to ask it of you, Mr. Pratt, but it must be done,” Laurence said to the armorer quietly, and Pratt with his big head hung low between his shoulders nodded once. “I will keep the count myself, do you not count aloud.”

“Yes, sir,” Pratt said.

The sun crept a little higher. All the crew were already assembled and waiting and had been ten minutes and more; but Laurence neither spoke nor moved until Granby cleared his throat and said, “Mr. Digby, ring the bell for eleven, if you please,” with great formality; and the eleven strokes tolled away, if softly.

Stripped to the waist and in their oldest breeches, Dunne and Hackley were led up to the poles; they at least did not disgrace themselves, but silently put their shaking hands up to be tied. Pratt was standing unhappily, ten paces back, running the long strap of the whip through his hands, folding it upon itself every few inches. It looked like an old scrap of harness, hopefully softened by use and much of the thickness worn away; better at any rate than new leather.

“Very well,” Laurence said; a terrible silence fell, broken only by the crack of the descending lash, the gasps and cries growing slowly fainter, the count going on and on with their bodies slackening in the frames, hanging heavy from their wrists and dripping thin trickles of blood. Temeraire keened unhappily and put his head under his wing.

“I make that fifty, Mr. Pratt,” Laurence said; nearer to forty if even so far, but he doubted any of his men had been counting very closely, and he was sick to his heart of the business. He had rarely ordered floggings of more than a dozen strokes, even as a naval captain, and the practice was entirely less common among aviators. For all the gravity of the offense, Dunne and Hackley were still very young; and he blamed himself in no small part that they should have come to run so wild.

Still it had to be done; they had known better, much better, and been reined in scarcely days before; so flagrant a breach, left unchecked, would have wholly ruined them. Granby had not been so far off, in Macao, to worry about the effect of their long travels on the young officers; the long idleness of their sea-journey followed by their more recent excess of adventure was no substitute for the steady pressure of ordinary day-to-day discipline, in a covert; it was not enough for a soldier to be brave. Laurence was not sorry to see a strong impression from the punishment on the faces of the other officers, particularly the young men, that at least this small good might come of the unhappy incident.

Dunne and Hackley were cut down, and carried not unkindly back up to the larger kiosque, and laid in a screened-off corner upon a pair of cots which Keynes had prepared; they lay on their faces still gasping softly in half-consciousness, while he with a tight mouth sopped away the blood from their backs, and gave them each a quarter-glass of laudanum to drink.

“How do they do?” Laurence asked the dragon-surgeon, later in the evening; they had fallen quiet after the drug, and lain still.

“Well enough,” Keynes said shortly. “I am grown used to having them as patients; they had only just risen from their sickbeds—”

“Mr. Keynes,” Laurence said quietly.

Keynes looking up at his face fell silent, and turned his attention back to the wounded men. “They are inclined to be a little feverish, but that is nothing wonderful. They are young and strong, the bleeding has stopped nicely; they ought to be on their feet by morning, for a little while in any case.”

“Very good,” Laurence said, and turned away to find Tharkay standing before him, in the low circle of the candle-light, looking at Dunne and Hackley where they lay; their striped backs were bare, and the weals bright red and purpling along the edges.

Laurence stared, drew in a sharp breath, then with controlled fury said, “Well, sir, and do you return? I wonder you should show your face here again.”

Tharkay said, “I hope my absence has not been too great an inconvenience,” with calm impudence.

“Only of too short duration,” Laurence said. “Take your money and your things and get out of my sight, and I wish you may go to the devil.”

“Well,” Tharkay said, after a moment, “if you have no further need of my services, I suppose I may as well be on my way; I will give Mr. Maden your apologies, then, and indeed I ought not to have committed you.”

“Who is Mr. Maden?” Laurence said, frowning; the name was distantly familiar, and then he slowly reached into his coat and drew out the letter which had come to them in Macao all those long months ago, which Tharkay had brought to him: flaps still marked with seals, and one of those marked with a solid M. “You are speaking of the gentleman who engaged you to bring us our orders?” he asked sharply.

“I am,” Tharkay said. “He is a banker here in the city, and Mr. Arbuthnot desired him to find a reliable messenger for the letter; alas, only I was to be had.” There was a little mocking quality to his voice. “He invites you to dine; will you come?”

Chapter 8

“NOW,” THARKAY SAID, soft, soft, they were at the palace wall, and the night-guards had just gone past; he flung a grappling-line, and they scrambled up and over: no great trick for a sailor, the stone wall ragged-faced and generous with footholds. In the outer gardens, pleasure-pavilions stood overlooking the sea, and a single great towering column loomed up against the half-moon while they ran across the lawns; then they were safely across the open ground and into the thickets left wild upon the hillside, ivy blanketing scraps of old, old ruins, arches built of brick and columns tumbled onto their sides.

They had another wall to scramble over, but this one, traveling as it did all around the circumference of the vast grounds, was too long to be well-patrolled; then they made their way down to the shores of the Golden Horn, where Tharkay calling softly roused a ferryman to carry them across the span in his little damp boat. The tributary glimmered to match its name even in the darkness, reflections stretching long from window-light and boat lanterns on both of its banks, people taking the air on balconies and terraces, and the sound of music carrying easily over the water.

Laurence would have liked to stop and look over the harbor for some closer detail of the works he had seen the previous day, but Tharkay led him on without a pause away from the dockyards and into the streets, not in the same direction as the embassy, but towards the ancient spire of Galata Tower, standing sentinel upon the hill. A low wall encircled the district around the watch-tower, soft and crumbling and very old, unattended; inside the streets were much quieter; only a handful of coffeehouses owned by Greeks or Italians still lit, small handfuls of men at tables talking in low voices over cups of the sweet-smelling apple tea, and here and there a devoted hookah-smoker gazing out upon the street while the fragrant steam emitted in slow, thin trails from between his lips.

Avraam Maden’s house was handsome, wider by twice than its nearest neighbors and framed by broad-spreading trees, established on an avenue with a clear prospect on the old tower. A maid welcomed them, and within were all the signs of prosperity and long residence: carpets old but rich and still bright; portraits upon the walls in gilt frames, of dark-eyed men and women: rather more Spanish than Turkish in character, Laurence would have said.

Maden poured them wine as the maid laid out a platter of thin bread with a dish of paste made from aubergines, very piquant, and another of sweet raisins and dates chopped together with nuts, flavored with red wine. “My family came from Seville,” he said, when Laurence mentioned the portraits, “when the King and the Inquisition expelled us; the Sultan was kinder to us.”

Laurence hoped he might not have a very dismal meal ahead of him, having some vague impression of restrictions upon the Jewish diet, but the late dinner was more than respectable: a very good leg of lamb, roasted to a turn in the Turkish manner and carved off the spit into thin slices, with new potatoes dressed in their skins and a fragrant glaze of olive oil and strong herbs; and besides a whole fish roasted with peppers and tomatoes, pungent and strongly flavored with the common yellow spice, and a tenderly stewed fowl which no one could have objected to.

Maden, who in his trade often served as a factor for British visitors, spoke excellent English, and his family also; they sat to table five, Maden’s two sons being already established in their own homes; besides his wife only his daughter Sara remained at home, a young woman well out of the schoolroom: not yet thirty but old to be unmarried with so good a dowry as Maden seemed able to provide, and her looks and manner were pleasing if in a foreign mode, dark hair and brows striking against fair skin, very like her elegant mother. Seated opposite the guests, she from either modesty or shyness kept her eyes lowered, though she spoke easily enough when addressed, in a self-possessed manner.

Laurence did not broach his urgent inquiries himself, feeling it a species of rudeness, but rather fell back on a description of their journey westward, prompted by his hosts’ inquiries; these were polite to begin with, but soon began to be truly curious. Laurence had been raised to consider it a gentleman’s duty to make good dinner conversation, and their passage had furnished him with material enough for anecdotes to make it very little burden in the present case. With the ladies present, he made somewhat light of the worst dangers of the sandstorm and the avalanche, and did not speak of their encounter with the horsemen-raiders, but there was interest enough without it.

“And then the wretches lighted on the cattle and were off again without a by-your-leave,” he said, finishing ruefully with the account of the ferals’ mortifying performance at the city gates, “with that villain Arkady wagging his head at us as he went, and all of us left at a standstill, our mouths hanging open. They went back well-pleased with themselves, I am sure, and as for us, it is of all things wonderful we were not thrown into prison.”

“A cold welcome for you after a difficult road,” Maden said, amused.

“Yes, a very difficult road,” Sara Maden said in her quiet voice, without looking up. “I am glad you all came through in safety.”

There was a brief pause in the conversation; then Maden reached out and handed to Laurence the bread-platter, saying, “Well, I hope you are comfortable enough now; at least in the palace you must not be subjected to all this noise we have.”

He was referring to the construction in the harbor, evidently a source of much aggrievance. “Who can get anything done with those great beasts overhead?” Mrs. Maden said, shaking her head. “Such a noise they make, and if they were to drop one of those cannon? Terrible creatures; I wish they were not let into civilized places. Not to speak of your dragon, of course, Captain; I am sure he is beautifully behaved,” she said hastily, catching herself, and speaking apologetically to Laurence, with some confusion.

“I suppose we sound to you complainers over nothing, Captain,” Maden said, coming to her rescue, “when you daily must tend to them at close quarters.”

“No, sir,” Laurence said, “indeed I found it wonderful to see a flight of dragons in the middle of the city here; we are not permitted to come so near to settled places, in England, and must follow particular courses to navigate overhead in the cities, that we do not distress the populace or the cattle, and even then there is always something of a noise made about our movements. Temeraire has often found it a burdensome stricture. Then is it a new sort of arrangement?”

“Of course,” Mrs. Maden said. “I never heard of such a thing before, and I hope I never do again when it is over with. Not a word of warning, either; they appeared one morning as soon as the call to prayer was over; and we were left quaking in our houses all the day.”

“One grows accustomed,” Maden said, with a philosophical shrug. “It has been a little slow the last two weeks, but the stores are opening again, dragons or no.”

“Yes, and none too soon,” Mrs. Maden said. “How we are to arrange everything, in less than a month—Nadire,” she called to the maid, “give me the wine, please,” with only the barest pause, scarcely noticeable.

The little maid came in and handed over the decanter, which stood in easy reach on the sideboard, and whisked herself out again; while the bottle went around, Maden said quietly, while he poured for Laurence, “My daughter is to be married soon.” He spoke in a queerly gentle tone, almost apologetic.

An uncomfortable, waiting silence fell, which Laurence did not understand; Mrs. Maden looked down at her plate, biting her lip. Tharkay broke it, lifting his glass, and said to Sara, “I drink to your health and happiness.” She raised her dark eyes at last and looked across the table at him. Only for a moment, and then he broke from her gaze, raising the glass between them; but that was long enough.

“My congratulations,” Laurence said, to help fill the silence, lifting his glass to her in turn.

“Thank you,” she said. There was a little high color in her face, but she inclined her head politely, and her voice did not waver. The silence yet lingered; Sara herself broke it, straightening with a little jerk of her shoulders, and addressed Laurence across the table, a little firmly, “Captain, may I ask you, what has happened to the boys?”

Laurence would have liked to oblige her courage, but was puzzled how to understand the question, until she added, “Were they not from your crew, the boys who looked in on the harem?”

“Oh; I am afraid I must own it,” Laurence said, mortified that the story should have somehow traveled so far, and hoping he was not compounding the situation by speaking of such a thing; he would not have thought the harem any fit subject for a young Turkish lady, any more than questions about a demi-mondaine or an opera singer from an English debutante. “They have been well-disciplined for their behavior, I assure you, and there will be no repetition of the event.”

“But they were not put to death, then?” she said. “I am glad to hear it; I will be able to reassure the women of the harem; it was all they were talking of, and they indeed hoped the boys would not suffer too greatly.”

“Do they go out into society so often, then?” Laurence had always imagined the harem very much in the nature of a prison, and no communication with the outer world permitted.

“Oh, I am kira, business agent, for one of the kadin,” Sara said. “Although they do leave the harem on excursions, it is only with a great deal of trouble; no one is allowed to see them, so they must be shut up in coaches, and take many guards, and they must have the Sultan’s permission. But being a woman, I can come in to them and go out again freely myself.”

“Then I hope I may beg you also to pass on to them my apologies for the intrusion, and those of the young men,” Laurence said.

“They would indeed have been better satisfied with a more successful one, of longer duration,” she said, with a ghost of amusement, and smiled at Laurence’s tinge of embarrassment. “Oh, I do not mean any indiscretion; only they suffer from a great deal of boredom, being permitted little but indolence, and the Sultan is more interested in his reforms than in his favorites.”

The meal being done, she rose with her mother and they left the table; she did not look round, but went out of the room tall and straight-shouldered, and Tharkay went to look silently out of the windows, into the garden behind the house.

Maden sighed, soundlessly, and poured more of the strong red wine into Laurence’s glass. Sweets were carried in, a platter of marchpane. “I understand you have questions for me, Captain,” he said.

He had served Mr. Arbuthnot not only by arranging for Tharkay to carry the message, but also as banker, and, it transpired, had been the foremost agent of the transaction. “You can conceive of the precautions which we arranged,” he said. “The gold was not conveyed all at once, but on several heavily escorted vessels, at various intervals, all in chests marked as iron ingots; and brought directly to my vaults until the whole was assembled.”

“Sir, to your knowledge were the agreements already signed, before the payment was brought hither?” Laurence asked.

Maden offered his upturned hands, without commitment. “What worth is a contract between monarchs? What judge will rule in such a dispute? But Mr. Arbuthnot thought all was settled. Otherwise, would he have taken risks so great, brought such a sum here? All seemed well, all seemed in order.”

“Yet if the sum were never handed over—” Laurence said.

Yarmouth had come with written instructions from the ambassador to arrange the delivery, a few days before the latter’s death and the former’s disappearance. “I did not for a moment doubt the message, and I knew the ambassador’s hand most well; his confidence in Mr. Yarmouth was complete,” Maden said. “A fine young man, and soon to be married; always steady. I would not believe any underhanded behavior of him, Captain.” But he spoke a little doubtfully, and he did not sound so certain as his words.

Laurence was silent. “And you conveyed the money to him as he asked?”

“To the ambassador’s residence,” Maden confirmed. “As I understood, it was thence to be delivered directly to the treasury; but the ambassador was killed the following day.”

He had receipts, signed; in Yarmouth’s hand and not the ambassador’s, however. He presented these to Laurence with some discomfort, and after leaving him to look at them a while, said abruptly, “Captain, you have been courteous; but let us speak plainly. This is all the proof which I have: the men who carried the gold are mine, of many years’ service, and only Yarmouth received it. A smaller sum, lost in these circumstances, I would return to you out of my own funds rather than lose my reputation.”

Laurence had been looking at the receipts under the lamp, closely; indeed in some corner of his mind such doubts might have been blooming. He let the papers fall to the table and walked to the window, angry at himself and all the world. “Good God,” he said, low, “what a hellish state to be looking in every direction with suspicion. No.” He turned around. “Sir, I beg you not repine on it. I dare say you are a man of parts, but that you should have orchestrated the murder of the British ambassador and the embarrassment of your own nation, I do not believe. And for the rest, Mr. Arbuthnot and not you was responsible for safeguarding our interests in the matter; if he trusted too much to Yarmouth, and was mistaken in his man—” He stopped and shook his head. “Sir, if my question is offensive to you, I beg you say so and I will at once withdraw it; but—Hasan Mustafa, if you know him; is it possible he is involved? Either himself the guilty party, or in—in collusion, if I must contemplate it, with Yarmouth? I am certain he has deliberately lied at least so far as claiming the agreements were not concluded.”

“Possible? Anything is possible, Captain; one man dead, another gone, thousands upon thousands of pounds of gold vanished? What is not possible?” Maden passed a hand over his brow tiredly, calming himself, and answered after a moment, “Forgive me. No. No, Captain, I cannot believe it. He and his family are in passionate support of the Sultan’s reforms, and the cleansing of the Janissary Corps—his cousin is married to the Sultan’s sister, his brother is head of the Sultan’s new army. I cannot say he is a man of stainless honor; can any man be so, who is deep in politics? But that he should betray all his own work, and the work of his house? A man may lie a little to save face, or be pleased to snatch at an excuse for escaping a regretted agreement, without being a traitor.”

“Yet why ought they regret it? Napoleon is if anything a greater threat to them now than ever he was, and we all the more necessary allies,” Laurence said. “The strengthening of our forces over the Channel must be of native value to them, as drawing more of Napoleon’s strength away westward.”

Maden looked vaguely discomfited, and at Laurence’s urging to speak frankly said, “Captain, there is a popular opinion, since Austerlitz, that Napoleon is not to be defeated, and foolish the nation which chooses to be his enemy. I am sorry,” he added, seeing Laurence’s grim look, “but so it is said in the streets and the coffeehouses; and by the ulema and the vezirs also, I imagine. The Emperor of Austria now sits his throne by Napoleon’s sufferance, and all the world knows it. Better never to have fought him at all.”

Tharkay bowed to Maden deeply as they were leaving. “Will you be in Istanbul long?” Maden asked him.

“No,” Tharkay answered, “I will not come back again.”

Maden nodded. “God be with you,” he said gently, and stood watching them go.

Laurence was weary, with a more than physical fatigue, and Tharkay utterly withdrawn. They had to wait a while, upon the riverbank, for another ferryman; the wind off the Bosphorus was enough to bring a chill to the air, though the summer weather was yet holding. Laurence roused under the bite of the sea-wind and looked at Tharkay: the man’s expression unmoved and unmoving, settled into calm lines and giving no sign of any strong emotion, save perhaps something of a tightness around the mouth, difficult to make out in the lantern-light.

A ferryman at last brought his boat up to the dock; the crossing they accomplished in silence, only the wood-creak and the dipping oars to break it, lopsided and unsteady strokes, the ferryman wheezing, and the water rippling up against the side of the boat; on the far bank the mosques shone from within, candle-light through the stained-glass windows: all the smooth domes together like an archipelago in the dark, and the monumental glory of the Haghia Sophia above them. The ferryman leapt from the boat and held it for them; they climbed up onto the banks into the glimmer of yet another mosque, small only by virtue of comparison; there were gulls flying wildly around the dome, calling in their raucous voices, bellies lit yellow with reflected light.

Too late for merchants, now, even the bazaars and the coffeehouses closed, and too early for the fishermen; the streets were empty as they climbed back towards the palace walls. Perhaps they grew incautious, from the hour or fatigue or distraction; or perhaps it was only ill-fortune; a party of guards had gone by, Tharkay had flung up his grapple; Laurence was at the top of the wall, waiting to offer a hand, with Tharkay halfway up, and abruptly two more guards appeared around the curve of the road, talking quietly together; in a moment they would see him.

Tharkay let go and dropped to the ground, to get his feet under him, as they rushed forward calling; they were already grappling for their swords. One seized his arm; Laurence leapt down upon the other, bore him down in a tumble, and, hooking him by the scruff of the neck, knocked his head against the ground again for good measure, leaving him stunned. Tharkay was sliding a red-washed knife out of the other man’s arm, pulling free of his slackened grip; he had Laurence’s arm, helping him up, and then they were running down the street together, sprinting, shouts and cries in immediate pursuit.

The noise brought the rest of the guards running back, converging on them out of the rabbit-warren of the streets and alley-ways; the upper floors of the crammedin houses jutted out inquisitively over the streets, and lights were blooming from the latticed windows in their wake, leaving a trail behind them. The uneven cobbles were treacherous; Laurence flung himself skidding past a corner, just avoiding a swinging sword as two of the guards came out of another side-street, nearly catching them.

The pursuit did not quickly give over; Laurence, following blindly after Tharkay up the hillside, felt his lungs squeezing up against the bands of his ribs; they were dodging with some purpose, he thought, he hoped: no time to stop and ask. Tharkay stopped at last by an old house, fallen into ruin, and turned to beckon him in; only the lowest floor remained, open to the sky, and a moldering trap-door to a cellar. But the guards were too close behind; they would be seen, and Laurence resisted, unwilling to be caught in a mouse-hole with no exit.

“Come!” Tharkay said impatiently, flinging back the trap-door, and led the way down, down; down rotted stairs into a cellar of bare earth, very damp, and far in the back yet another door: or rather a doorway, so low Laurence had nearly to bend double to get through it, and leading further below were steps hewn not of wood but stone, round-edged and slimy with age; up from the deep dark came the soft plucking sound of dripping water.

They went down for a long time. Laurence found one hand on the hilt of his sword; the other he kept on the wall, which as they descended suddenly vanished from under his reaching fingers, and his next step went into water ankle-deep. “Where are we?” he whispered, and his voice went a long hollow way off, swallowed up by dark; the water washed the tops of his boots with every stride along the floor.

The first glow of torchlight dawned behind him as the guards came down after them, and he could see a little: a pale column stood not far away, shining wet on its worn pebbled surface, wider than his arms could span; the ceiling too far above to see, and at his knees a few dull greyish fish bumping in blind hunger, their seeking mouths at the surface of the water making little popping sounds. Laurence caught Tharkay’s arm and pointed; they struggled against the weight of the water and the mud thickening the floor, and put themselves behind the pillar as the tentative torch-flickers came further down, widening the circle of dim red light.

A gallery of columns yawned away in every direction around them, strange and malformed; some in separate mismatched blocks, piled atop one another like a child’s attempts, held together by nothing it seemed but the weight of the city pressing down upon them: a strain for Atlas to bear, not the crumbling brick and ruin of this hollow place, some cathedral hall long buried and forgotten. For all the cold empty vastness of the space, the air felt queer and very close, as though some share of that weight were bearing down on his own shoulders; Laurence could not help but envision the cataclysm of an eventual collapse: the distant vault of the ceiling disintegrating brick by brick, until one day the arches could no longer hold up their heads and all, houses, streets, palace, mosques, the shining domes, came tumbling down, and drowned ten thousand in this waiting charnel-house.

He clenched his shoulders once against the feeling, and tapping Tharkay silently on the arm pointed at the next pillar: the guards were coming into the water, with enough noise to muffle their own movements. The muck of the bottom stirred up in black swirls as they slogged on, keeping in the shadows of the pillars: thick mud and silt crunching beneath his boots, and gleams of picked-clean bone pale through the water. Not all fish: the jutting curve of a jaw-bone showed above the mud, a few teeth still clinging; a green-stained leg bone leaned against the base of a column, as though washed up by some underground tide.

A sort of horror was gripping him at the notion of meeting his own end here, beyond any simple fear of mortality; something hideous at forming one of the nameless uncounted flung down to rot in the dark. Laurence panted through his open mouth, not only for silence, not only to avoid the stench of mildew and corruption; he was bent over nearly at the waist, oppressed, increasingly conscious of a fierce irrational urge to stop, to turn and fight their way back out into the clean open air. He held a corner of his cloak over his mouth and doggedly went on.

The guards were grown more systematic in their pursuit: they ranged themselves in a line stretched the width of the hall, each one with upraised torch illuminating only a small feeble ring, but the edges of these overlapping to make a barrier which their prey could not cross unseen, as good as a fence of iron. They advanced slow but certain in step, chanted out aloud in unison, voices tolling low, chasing the darkness out of its last clung-to corners with reverberation and light. Laurence thought he glimpsed, ahead, the first reflections off the far wall; they were indeed drawing close to the end of the mouse-hole, where there should be no escape but to try and rush the line, and hope they could outdistance the pursuit again; but now with legs wearied and chilled both by trudging through the deep water.

Tharkay had been touching the pillars as he and Laurence dashed now from one to the other trying to keep ahead; he was running his hand along their sides and squinting at their surfaces; at last he stopped at one, and Laurence touching it also found deep carvings cut into the stone all over it, shapes like drops of rain with soapy-wet muck gathered in the ridges: wholly unlike the other unfinished columns. The line of searchers was growing ever closer, yet Tharkay stopped and began to prod at the floor with the toe of his boot; Laurence drew his sword and with mental apology to Temeraire for so insulting the blade began to run it also over the hard stone underneath the muck, until he felt the tip slide abruptly into some kind of shallow channel cut in the floor, less than a foot wide and thoroughly clogged.

Tharkay, feeling around, nodded, and Laurence followed him along the length of the channel, both of them running now as best they could in the knee-high water: the splashing echoes were lost in the inexorable chanting behind them, bir—iki—üç—dört, repeated so often Laurence began to recognize the counting words. The wall was directly before them now, streaked with shades of green and brown over the thick, flat mortar, and otherwise unbroken; and the channel had stopped as abruptly as it had begun.

But Tharkay turned them: a smaller annex stood off to the side, two pillars holding up its vault, and Laurence nearly jerked back: a staring monstrous face loomed half out of the water at the base of the pillar, one blind stone eye fixed upon them, a dim hellish red. A shout went up: they had been seen.

They fled, and as they ran past the hideous monument, Laurence felt the first thin trickle of moving air upon his face: a draught somewhere near. Together groping over the wall they found the black and narrow opening, hidden from the torches behind a protrusion: stairs half-choked with filth, and the air fetid and swampy; he took reluctant deep gulps of it as they ran up the narrow passage and came crawling out at last through an old rain-gutter, pushing away the crusted iron grate, nearly on hands and knees.

Tharkay was bent double and gasping; with a tremendous effort, Laurence put back the grate, and tore a branch from a low sapling nearby to push through the empty hasp, holding it in place. He caught Tharkay by the arm and they staggered together drunkenly away through the streets; nothing to cause much comment, so long as no one looked closely at the state of their boots and the lower part of their cloaks: the banging upon the grate was already growing distant behind them, and their faces had not been seen, surely; not to put a name to, in that mad pursuit.

They found a place at length where the palace walls were a little lower; and taking more care that they were unobserved this time, Laurence boosted Tharkay up, and with his help in turn managed to scramble somehow up and over. They fell into a graceless and grateful heap some little distance into the grounds, beside an old iron water-fountain half buried in greenery, the water trickling but cold, and they cupped up greedy handfuls of it to their mouths and faces, soaking their clothing without regret: it washed away the stench, a little.

The silence was at first complete, but gradually as the roar of his own heart and lungs slackened, Laurence began to be able to hear more clearly the small noises of the night, the rustling of mice and leaves; the faint and far-off sound of the birds singing in the palace aviary beyond the inner walls; the irregular rasp of Tharkay’s knife against his whetstone: he was polishing the blade with slow occasional strokes, to draw no attention.

“I would say something to you,” Laurence said quietly, “on matters as they stand between us.”

Tharkay paused a moment, and the knife-blade trembled in the light. “Very well,” he said, resuming his slow, careful work, “say what you will.”

“I spoke earlier today in haste,” Laurence said, “and in a manner which I would ordinarily disdain to use to any man in my service. And yet even now I hardly know how I should apologize to you.”

“I beg you not to trouble yourself further,” Tharkay said coolly, never raising his head, “let it all pass; I promise you I will not repine upon it.”

“I have considered what to make of your behavior,” Laurence said, paying no mind to this attempt at deflection, “and I cannot make you out; tonight you have not only saved my life, but materially contributed to the progress of our mission. And if I consider only the final consequences of your actions, throughout our expedition, there is hardly any room for complaint; indeed you have rather steadfast brought us through one danger and the next, often at your own peril. But twice now you have abandoned your post, in circumstances fraught with innumerable difficulties, with a secrecy both unnecessary and contrived, leaving us as a consequence adrift and prey to grave anxieties.”

“Perhaps it did not occur to me my absence would occasion such dismay,” Tharkay said, blandly, and Laurence’s temper rose at once to meet this fresh challenge.

“Kindly do not represent yourself to me as a fool,” he said. “I could more easily believe you the most brazen traitor who has ever walked the earth, and the most inconsistent besides.”

“Thank you; that is a handsome compliment.” Tharkay sketched an ironic salute with the knife-point in the air. “But there seems to me little point in disputation, when you will not wish my services much longer regardless.”

“Whether for a minute or a month,” Laurence said, “still I will have done with these games. I am grateful to you, and if you depart, you will go with my thanks. But if you stay, I will have your promise that you will henceforth abide by my command, and cease this haring-off without leave; I will not have a man in my service whom I doubt, and Tharkay,” he added, abruptly sure, “I think you like to be doubted.”

Tharkay put down the knife and whetstone; his smile had gone, and his air of mockery. “You may say rather, that I like to know if I am doubted; and you will not be far wrong.”

“You have certainly done all you could to ensure it.”

“That seems to you I suppose perverse,” Tharkay said, “but I have long since been taught that my face and my descent bar me from the natural relations of gentlemen, with no action on my part. And if I am not to be trusted, I would rather provoke a little open suspicion, freely expressed, than meekly endure endless slights and whispers not quite hidden behind my back.”

“I too have endured society’s whispers, and every one of my officers; we are not in service to those small-minded creatures who like to sneer in corners, but to our country; and that service is a better defense of our honor, in the face of petty insult, than the most violent objections we could make,” Laurence said.

Tharkay said passionately, “I wonder if you would speak so if you were forced to endure it wholly alone; if not only society but all those on whom you might justly have a claim of brotherhood looked upon you with that same disdain, your superior officers and your comrades-in-arms; if all hope of independence and advancement were denied you and, as a sop, you were offered the place of a superior servant, somewhere between a valet and a trained dog.”

He closed his mouth on anything further, though his customary seeming indifference looked now a mask imperfectly put on, and there was some suggestion of color in his face.

“Am I meant to take these charges as laid to my own account?” Laurence demanded, suffering at once indignation and unease; but Tharkay shook his head.

“No, I beg pardon for my vehemence; the injuries of which I speak are no less bitter for their age.” With a ghost of his former wryness he added, “What incivilities you have offered me, I do not deny I have provoked; I have formed a habit of anticipation: amusing, to me at least, if perhaps unjust to my company.”

He had said enough that Laurence might without undue speculation imagine the sort of treatment which had driven Tharkay to abandon country and companionship for his present solitary existence, beholden to none and of none, which to Laurence seemed utterly barren, a waste of a man proven worthy of something better; and stretching out his hand he said earnestly, “If you can believe it so in this case, then give me your word, and take mine—I hope I may in safety promise to give no less than full measure of loyalty to any man who gives me his, and I think I would be sorrier to lose you than I yet know.”

Tharkay looked at him, a queer uncertain expression briefly crossing his face, then lightly said, “Well, I am set in my ways; but as you are willing to take my word, Captain, I suppose I would be churlish to refuse to offer it,” and reached out his hand with a jaunty air; but there was nothing whatsoever insincere about his grip.

“Ugh,” Temeraire said, having lifted them both over into the garden, examining with distaste the slimy residue on his foreclaws. “But I do not care if you smell bad, so long as you are back; Granby said you were surely only staying late for dinner, and that I must not go look for you; but you were gone so very long,” he added more plaintively, before plunging his forehand into a lily-pond to wash it off.

“We were clumsy about it coming back in and were forced to find a bolt-hole for a little, but as you see all ended well; I am very sorry to have given you cause for anxiety,” Laurence said, stripping off his own clothes unceremoniously and going directly into the pond himself; Tharkay was already submerging. “Dyer, take those and my boots and see what you and Roland can do with them; and bring me that damned soap.”

“I don’t see that it would answer if Yarmouth were guilty,” Granby said, when Laurence, scrubbed and in shirtsleeves and breeches, had finished making his report of the dinner. “However would he have transported such a mass of gold? He should have needed to take ship, unless he was mad enough to move it away by caravan.”

“He would have been noticed,” Tharkay agreed quietly. “By Maden’s account the gold needed some hundred chests; and there have been no reports from the caravanserai or the dockyards, of any movement near so large: I spent the morning yesterday in making inquiries. Indeed he would have been hard-pressed to find any transport; half the drovers have been ferrying in supplies for the harbor fortifications, and the other half have been keeping out of the city because of the dragons.”

“Could he perhaps have hired a dragon, then?” Laurence asked. “We saw those dragon-traders in the East; do they ever come so far?”

“I have never seen them this side of the Pamirs,” Tharkay said. “In the West men will not have them in the cities, so they could get no profit in any case, and as they are thought nothing other than ferals, they would likely be seized upon and thrust into breeding-grounds, if they came.”

“It don’t signify; he couldn’t move gold by dragon, not if he wanted it back again,” Granby said. “I don’t believe you could give a dragon great heaps of gold and jewels to carry about for days and then ask him to hand it all back.”

They had remained in the garden to hold their low-voiced discussion, and Temeraire now observed, in faintly wistful tones, “It does sound like a very great deal of gold,” not disputing Granby’s remark in the least. “Perhaps he has put it away somewhere in the city?”

“He would have to be part dragon himself, to be satisfied with hoarding so vast a sum, where he could not show his face again to make use of it,” Laurence said. “No; he would not have gone to such lengths, if he had no way of taking away the money.”

“But you have all finished saying that the gold cannot have been taken away,” Temeraire said reasonably. “So it must still be here.”

They were silent, and Laurence finally said, “Then what can be the alternative but at least the connivance of the ministers, if not their active involvement? And such an insult, Britain would have to answer; even if they wish an end to our alliance, would they deliberately provoke a war, which surely would cost them a greater sum than this, and in blood as well as gold?”

“They have been damned busy to see to it we should go away thinking it all Yarmouth’s fault,” Granby pointed out. “We haven’t evidence to go to war over.”

Tharkay abruptly stood up from the ground, brushing away dust; they had brought out rugs to recline upon, in the Turkish fashion, there being nothing like chairs in the kiosque. Laurence looked over his shoulder and he and Granby scrambled also to their feet: a woman was standing at the far end of their grove, in the shade of the cypresses. She was perhaps the same they had seen before, on the palace grounds; though in the heavy veil there was scarcely any telling one from another.

“You should not be here,” Tharkay said, low, when she had come quickly towards them. “Where is your maid?”

“She is waiting for me at the stairs; she will cough if anyone is coming,” the woman answered, cool and steady, her dark eyes never leaving his face.

“Your servant, Miss Maden,” Laurence said, awkwardly; he did not know what to do. With all the sympathy in the world he could not in honor endorse a clandestine meeting or worse yet an elopement, and then besides he was in her father’s debt; but if they asked him for assistance, he wondered how he could refuse. He fell back on formalities, saying, “May I present Temeraire, and my first lieutenant, John Granby?”

Granby with a start made her a not-very-polished leg. “Honored, Miss Maden,” he said, pronouncing her name in a querying tone, and glanced puzzled at Laurence; Temeraire peered down at her with more open inquisitiveness after making his own greeting.

“I will not ask again,” Tharkay said to her low.

“Let us not speak of what cannot be,” she said, drawing her hand out of the deep pocket of her coat; but not to reach out to him, as Laurence first thought. Instead she held it out flat towards them, saying, “I was able to get inside the treasury, for a moment; though most have been melted down, I am afraid,” and upon her palm rested unmistakable a single golden sovereign, stamped with the visage of the King.

“You cannot trust these Oriental tyrants,” Granby said with pessimism, “and after all, we are as good as calling him a thief and a murderer besides. Like as not he will have your head off.”

Temeraire was considerably more sanguine, as he had been permitted to go along, and therefore considered all physical dangers rendered negligible by his presence. “I will like to see the Sultan,” he said. “Perhaps he may have some interesting jewels, and then we may at last go home again. Although it is a shame that Arkady and the others are not here to see him.”

Laurence, not sharing this last sentiment at all, was himself hopeful for a good outcome; Mustafa had regarded the gold coin grimly, and had listened without even an attempt at counterfeiting surprise to Laurence’s cold avowal that it had come to his hand from the treasury.

“No, sir; I will not name you my source,” Laurence had said, “but if you like, I will go with you to the treasury now, directly; I rather believe we will find more, if you doubt the provenance of this one.”

This proposal Mustafa had refused; and though he had made no admission of guilt, no explanations, he had said abruptly, “I must speak with the Grand Vezir,” and gone away again; and in the evening a summons had come: at last they were called to an audience with the Sultan.

“I do not mean to put him to the blush,” Laurence added now. “Poor Yarmouth deserves better, God knows, and Arbuthnot himself; but when we have got the eggs back to Britain will be soon enough for the Government to decide how they choose to make them answer for it, and I know damned well what they would say to my taking action in that matter.” Indeed, he suspected dismally there would be a great deal said of his actions even in the matter of the eggs. “In any case, I hope we will learn this is indeed some machination of his ministers, of which the Sultan himself knows nothing.”

The two Kazilik dragons Bezaid and Sherazde had returned to escort them once again to the meeting with proper ceremony, even though the three of them were scarcely in the air for a moment, only flying over the palace and landing in the great open lawn of the First Court, outside the front gates of the palace. Absurd though it seemed to Laurence to be ushered with such ceremony into a palace where he had slept three nights already, they were set in a row with the Kaziliks before and after, and marched in stately array through the flung-wide bronze gates and into the courtyard standing just before the gorgeously ornamented portico of the Gate of Felicity: in perfect orderly rows along the pathway stood the ranks of the vezirs, their white turbans brilliant in the sunshine, and farther back along the walls the nervous snorting horses of the cavalry in attendance pranced as they walked by.

The Sultan’s throne, wide and gold and blazing all over with polished green gemstones, stood upon a gorgeous rug woven of many-colored wool and elaborately patterned with flowers and ornaments; his dress still more magnificent, a robe of marmalade-orange and yellow satin bordered in black over a tunic of blue and yellow silk, with the diamond-encrusted hilt of his dagger showing above his sash; and an aigrette of diamonds around a great square emerald held a tall spray of stiff feathers affixed to the head of his high white turban. Though the courtyard was large and crowded, there was scarcely any noise; the ranked officials did not speak or whisper amongst themselves, or even fidget.

It was an impressive display, calculated with success to impose a certain natural reluctance to break that silence upon any visitor. But as Laurence stepped forward, Temeraire suddenly hissed behind him, the sound carrying and as purely dangerous as the scrape of a sword-blade leaving its scabbard; Laurence, appalled, turned round to look at him in protest, but Temeraire’s gaze was fixed to the left: in the shade cast down by the high tower of the Divan, piled upon herself in glittering white coils, Lien lay watching them with her blood-red eyes.

Chapter 9

THERE WAS SCARCELY an opportunity to think, to do anything but stare; the Kazilik dragons had moved to flank Temeraire, and Mustafa was already beckoning them closer to the throne. Laurence numbly stepped forward and made his formal bow with less than his customary grace. The Sultan looked at him without much expression. His face was very broad, his neck disappearing between his clothing and his square brown beard, and rather delicate-featured, with a contemplative look in his handsome dark eyes; he carried within himself an air of repose and of dignity, which seemed rather natural than assumed.

All the prepared speech had gone entirely from Laurence’s head, and his rehearsed phrases; he looked up at the Sultan squarely and said in the plainest French,

“Your Majesty, you know my errand, and the agreement between our nations. All her obligations under that agreement Britain has fulfilled, and the payment has been delivered. Will you give us the eggs for which we have come?”

The Sultan received this blunt speech calmly and with no sign of anger; he spoke himself in fluent and easy

French and said mildly, “Peace be upon your country, and your King; let us pray that friendship will never fail between us.” He said a little more in this vein, and spoke of deliberations among his ministers, and promised another audience, and the pursuit of many inquiries. Still laboring under the violent and unhappy shock of finding Lien in the midst of the Sultan’s court and his inner councils, Laurence had difficulty in following all he said, but none at all in understanding the meaning underneath: more delay, more refusal, and no intention at all of providing satisfaction. There was indeed little effort made to conceal that meaning: the Sultan made no denials, no explanations, counterfeited no wrath or dismay. Almost he spoke with a touch of pity in his look, though not in the least a softening, and when he had finished, he dismissed them at once, without granting Laurence another opportunity to speak.

Temeraire’s attention throughout had never wavered: he had not so much as glanced at the Sultan he had been so eager to see, despite all the glittering display, but rather kept his eyes fixed upon Lien; his shoulders were bunched from moment to moment, and his foreleg crept up by small degrees until it was nearly bumping against Laurence’s back, waiting to snatch him away.

The Kaziliks had to nudge him to set him into motion, away along the path, and he went sideways, crab-stepping awkwardly, so as not to face away from her; she for her part never stirred, but as serene as a snake let her eyes follow them back around the curve of the palace and out of the inner courtyard again, until the wall hid her from view.

“Bezaid says she has been here three weeks,” Temeraire said; his ruff was spread full and trembling, and had not lowered since the moment they had laid eyes upon Lien. He had made a great protest when Laurence had tried to go into the kiosque, refusing to let him out of his sight; even in the garden he had nudged Laurence insistently to climb upon his foreleg, and his officers had been forced to come out to hear his report.

“Long enough to have knocked us to flinders,” Granby said grimly. “If she’s of a like mind with Yongxing, she wouldn’t have scrupled to toss poor Yarmouth into the Med, any more than he would have minded having you knocked on the head; and as for Arbuthnot’s accident, it’s no great trouble for a dragon to spook a horse.”

“She might have done all this and more besides,” Laurence said, “and made no headway against us, if the Turks had not been full willing to profit by it.”

“They have fallen in with Bonaparte for certain, and make no mistake,” Lieutenant Ferris agreed, smoldering, “and I wish they may have joy of it, when they are dancing to his tune; they’ll soon enough be sorry for it.”

“We will be sorrier, sooner,” Laurence said.

The shadow overhead silenced them all, but for Temeraire’s savage and rumbling growl; and the two Kaziliks sat up hissing anxiously as Lien circled down and landed gracefully in the clearing. Temeraire bared his teeth at her and snarled.

“You sound like a dog,” she said to him, cool and disdainful, in fluent French, “and your manners are not much different. Will you bark at me next?”

“I do not care if you think I am rude,” Temeraire said, tail lashing militantly, with much danger to the surrounding trees, walls, statuary. “If you want to fight, I am ready, and I will not let you hurt Laurence or my crew, ever.”

“Why should I wish to fight you?” Lien said; she settled herself back upon her haunches, sitting erect like a cat, with her tail coiled neatly around herself, and unblinking stared at them.

Temeraire paused. “Because—because—but do you not hate me? I would hate you, if Laurence had been killed, and it were at all your fault,” he said candidly.

“And like a barbarian, you would fling yourself at me and try to claw me to death, I am sure,” Lien said.

Temeraire’s tail faded slowly to the ground, only the very tip still twitching, and he gazed at her nonplussed; that would certainly have been his very reaction. “Well, I am not afraid of you.”

“No,” she said calmly. “Not yet.”

Temeraire stared at her, and she added, “Would your death repay one tenth part of what you have taken from me? Do you think I would count your captain’s blood equal to that of my dear companion, a great and honorable prince, as far above yours as pure jade is to the offal that lies in the streets?”

“Oh!” Temeraire said, with indignation, ruffing up even further. “He was not honorable, at all, or else he would not have tried to have Laurence killed; Laurence is worth a hundred of him or any other prince, and anyway, Laurence is a prince now himself,” he added.

“Such a prince you may keep,” she said, contemptuous. “For my companion, I will have a truer revenge.”

“Well,” Temeraire said, snorting, “if you do not want to fight, and you do not mean to hurt Laurence, I do not know why you have come; and you can go away again now, because I do not trust you in the least,” he finished defiantly.

“I came,” she said, “to be certain that you understood. You are very young and stupid, and you have been badly educated; I would pity you, if I had any pity left.

“You have overthrown the whole of my life, torn me from family and friends and home; you have ruined all my lord’s hopes for China, and I must live knowing that all for which he fought and labored was for naught. His spirit will live unquiet, and his grave go untended.

“No, I will not kill you, or your captain, who binds you to his country.” She shook out her ruff and leaning forward said softly, “I will see you bereft of all that you have, of home and happiness and beautiful things. I will see your nation cast down and your allies drawn away. I will see you as alone and friendless and wretched as am I; and then you may live as long as you like, in some dark and lonely corner of the earth, and I will call myself content.”

Temeraire was wide-eyed and transfixed by the low monotone finality of her words, his own ruff wilting slowly down to lie flat against his neck, and by the time she had finished he was huddled small away from her, clutching Laurence still closer with both his forelegs shielding him like a cage.

She half-unfurled her wings, gathering herself together. “I am leaving now for France, and the service of this barbarian emperor,” she said. “It is certain that the miseries of my exile will be many, but I will bear them better now, having spoken to you. We will not meet again perhaps for a long while; I hope you will remember me, and know what joys you have are numbered.”

She leapt aloft, and with three quick wing-strokes was away and swiftly diminishing.

“For God’s sake,” Laurence said strongly, when they had stood all together utterly silent and dismayed awhile, in her wake, “we are not children, to be frightened witless by threats; and that she meant us all the ill in the world we already knew.”

“Yes, but I did not know quite so well,” Temeraire said, in a small voice, and did not seem inclined to let Laurence move away.

“My dear, pray do not let her distress you,” Laurence said, laying his hand on Temeraire’s soft muzzle. “You would only be giving her what she desires, your unhappiness, and cheap at the cost of a few words. They are hollow: even she, powerful as she is, alone cannot make so great a difference to the war; and Napoleon would exert himself to the fullest towards our destruction regardless of her assistance.”

“But she has already done us a great deal of harm, herself,” Temeraire said unhappily. “Now they will not let us have the eggs that we need so badly, and have done so much for.”

“Laurence,” Granby said abruptly, “by God, these villains have bloody well stolen half-a-million pounds, and like as not used the funds to build themselves those fortifications so they could thumb their noses at the Navy. We cannot let it stand; we must do something. Temeraire could bring half this palace down on their heads with one proper roar—”

“We will not murder and ruin to revenge ourselves, as she does; such a satisfaction we ought and do disdain,” Laurence said. “No,” he continued, raising a hand when Granby would have protested. “Do you go and send the men to their supper, and then to take some rest, as much sleep as they can manage, while the light lasts.

“We leave tonight,” he continued, very cold and calm, “and we take the eggs with us.”

“Sherazde says her egg is being kept inside the harem,” Temeraire said, after some inquiry, “near the baths, where it is warm.”

“Temeraire, they will not give us away?” Laurence asked with anxiety, looking at the Kaziliks.

“I have not told them why I am asking,” Temeraire admitted, with a guilty look. “It does not feel quite proper; but after all,” he added, “we will take good care of the eggs, so they will not mind; and the people have no right to object, since they took the gold. But I cannot ask them very much more, or they will wonder why I want to know.”

“We will have the devil of a time stumbling about looking for them,” Granby said. “I suppose the place must be littered with guards, and if the women see us they will surely send up a howl; this mission will be no joke.”

“I think we must only a few of us go,” Laurence said, low. “I will take a few volunteers—”

“Oh, the devil you will!” Granby exclaimed furiously. “No, this time I damned well put my foot down, Laurence. Send you off to go scrambling about in that warren with no notion where you are going, and nothing more likely than running into a dozen guards round every corner; I should like to see myself do it. I am not going back to England to tell them I sat about twiddling my thumbs whilst you got yourself cut to pieces. Temeraire, you are not to let him go, do you hear me? He is sure to be killed; I give you my word.”

“If the party are sure to be killed, I am not going to let anyone go!” Temeraire said, in high alarm, and sat up sharp, quite prepared to physically hold anyone back who made an attempt to leave.

“Temeraire, this is plain exaggeration,” Laurence said. “Mr. Granby, you overstate the case, and you overstep your bounds.”

“Well, I don’t,” Granby said defiantly. “I have bit my tongue a dozen times over, because I know it is wretched hard to sit about watching and you haven’t been trained up to it, but you are a captain, and you must be more careful of your neck. It isn’t only your own but the Corps’ affair if you snuff it, and mine too.”

“If I may,” Tharkay said quietly, interrupting when Laurence would have remonstrated further with Granby, “I will go; alone I am reasonably sure I can find a way to the eggs, without rousing any alarm, and then I can return and guide the rest of the party there.”

“Tharkay,” Laurence said, “this is no service you owe us; I would not order even a man under oath of arms to undertake it, without he were willing.”

“But I am willing,” Tharkay gave his faint half-smile, “and more likely to come back whole from it than anyone else here.”

“At the cost of running thrice the risk, going and coming back and going again,” Laurence said, “with a fresh chance of running into the guards every time through.”

“So it is very dangerous, then,” Temeraire said, overhearing to too much purpose, and pricking up his ruff further. “You are not to go, at all, Granby is quite right; and neither is anyone else.”

“Oh, Hell,” Laurence said, under his breath.

“It seems there is very little alternative to my going,” Tharkay said.

“Not you either!” Temeraire contradicted, to Tharkay’s startlement, and settled down as mulish as a dragon could look; and Granby had folded his arms and wore an expression very similar. Laurence had ordinarily very little inclination to profanity, but he was sorely tempted on this occasion. An appeal to Temeraire’s reason might sway him to allow a party to make the attempt, if he could be persuaded to accept the risk as necessary for the gain, like a battle; but he would surely balk at seeing Laurence go, and Laurence had not the least intention of sending men on so deadly an enterprise if he were not going himself, Corps rules be damned.

They were left at a standstill, and then Keynes came out into the gardens. “For the sake of secrecy, it is to be hoped neither of those dragons understands English,” he said. “If you have all done shouting like fishwives, Dunne begs the favor of a word, Captain; he and Hackley saw the baths, during their excursion.”

“Yes, sir,” Dunne said; he was sitting up on his makeshift cot, pale with fever-hot cheeks, in only breeches and a shirt hanging loose over his lacerated skin; Hackley, slighter than he, had taken the flogging worse and was still prostrated. “At least, I am almost sure; they all had the ends of their hair wet, coming out of the place, and the fair ones—the fair ones looked pink with heat.” He dropped his eyes ashamedly, not looking Laurence in the face, and finished hurriedly, “And there were a dozen chimneys out of the building, sir, all of them smoking away, though it was midday and hot.”

Laurence nodded. “Do you remember the way, and are you strong enough to go?”

“I do well enough, sir,” Dunne said.

“He would do well enough to stay lying down,” Keynes said caustically.

Laurence hesitated. “Can you draw us a map?” he asked Dunne.

“Sir,” Dunne said, swallowing, “sir, please let me come. Truly I don’t think I can, without seeing the place around me; we got turned about a great deal.”

Despite this new advantage, Temeraire took a great deal more convincing; at last Laurence was forced to yield to Granby’s demand, and let him come along, leaving young Lieutenant Ferris in command of the rest of the crew. “There; you may be easy, Temeraire,” Granby said with satisfaction, putting the signal-flares in his own belt. “If there’s the least danger, I will fire off a flare, and you will come and take Laurence up, eggs or no; I will see to it he is where you can reach him.”

Laurence felt a strong sense of indignation; this was all a piece of considerable insubordination, but as it was visibly approved not only by Temeraire but by the entire crew, he had no recourse; and he was privately conscious the Admiralty would be wholly of like mind, except perhaps to censure him even more strongly for going along at all.

Without very good grace he turned to his acting second lieutenant. “Mr. Ferris,” he said, “keep all the men aboard and ready. Temeraire, if you have not seen our signal, and a noise begins in the palace, or there is any sign of dragons overhead, go up at once; in the dark you can keep well out of sight for a long time.”

“I will; and you needn’t think I will go away if I do not see your signal for a long time, so do not try and tell me to do just that,” Temeraire said, with a martial light in his eyes.

Thankfully, the Kaziliks went away before nightfall, to be replaced again by lesser guards, another pair of the middle-weight dragons, who, a little shy of Temeraire, stayed back in the grove and did not trouble him; and the moon was little more than a narrow sliver, enough to give them a little light to place their feet by.

“You will remember I rely upon you to keep all the crew safe,” Laurence said to Temeraire softly. “Pray have a care for them, if anything should go awry; do promise me.”

“I will,” Temeraire answered, “but I will not fly away and leave you behind, so you are to promise me that you will be careful, and send for me if there is any trouble; I do not like to stay here, at all, and be left behind,” he finished miserably.

“I do not at all like to leave you, either, my dear,” Laurence said, and stroked the soft muzzle, for Temeraire’s comfort and his own. “We will try not to be long.”

Temeraire made a low unhappy noise, and then he sat up on his haunches, his wings half-spread to conceal his movements from the guardian dragons, and one after another put the appointed party carefully upon the roof: Laurence and Granby; Tharkay; Dunne; Martin; Fellowes, the harness-master, all his spare leather distributed among them in sacks, to rig out the eggs for carrying; and for their lookout Digby, just made midshipman. With Salyer, Dunne, and Hackley all knocked-down, Laurence had been short of junior officers, and the boy had earned it with his steady work, though young for the promotion; it was pleasanter by far to raise him up than the earlier demotions had been, and they began the desperate adventure with a round of spirits and a quiet toast, to the new midshipman, to the success of their enterprise, and lastly to the King.

The slanting roof was uncertain and difficult footing, but they had to keep low in any case, and steadying themselves with their hands they managed to creep over to where the roof met the harem wall, easily wide enough to stand upon; from the height they could look over the whole ferociously labyrinthine complex: minarets and high towers, galleries and domes, courtyards and cloisters, all standing one atop the other with scarcely any break between them, as though the whole had been almost one single edifice, the work of an architect run mad; the roofs white and grey, plentifully broken up with skylights and attic windows, but all of these which they could make out were barred.

A large marble swimming-pool abutted the wall on the far side, very far down, a narrow walkway of grey slate running all around the border and to a pair of open arches: a way in. They dropped a line and Tharkay slipped down first, all of them tense and watching the lit windows for any passing shadow, the dark for any sudden illumination, any sign they had been seen. No cry was raised; they slung Dunne into a loop and Fellowes and Granby let him down together, the rope braced against their hips and hissing softly through their gloved hands; all the rest of them scrambled down after, one at a time.

They crept single-file along the walkway; the light of many windows shone in the water, rippling yellow, and lanterns were shining on the raised terrace overlooking the pool. They reached the archway; they were inside, and oil lamps flickering from niches upon the floor stretched away along a narrow passageway, low-ceilinged and ill-lit by guttering candles, broken up with many doors and stairways. There was a whispering draught like a distant conversation coming into their faces.

They went silently and very fast, as fast as they dared; Tharkay in the lead and Dunne whispering to him about the way, as best he could recall in the darkness. They passed by many small rooms, some still touched with a drifting fragrance, sweet and more fragile than roses, which could only be caught now and again by an accidental breath, and faded into the stronger lingering smell of incense and spice if one tried to draw it in. Throughout, flung upon divans and scattered on the floor, lay the beguilements of the harem’s idle hours, writing-boxes and books and musical instruments, ornaments for the hair, scarves cast aside, the paints and brushes of beauty. Ducking his head through one doorway, Digby gave a startled gasp, and coming to his side they at first reached for their swords and pistols, seeing all around them suddenly a crowd of pale distorted faces: they were looking into a graveyard of old mirrors, cracked and gap-toothed and leaning back against the walls, still in their golden frames.

Now and again Tharkay would halt them, and wave them all into one room or another, to crouch in silence, waiting, until in the distance footfalls died away again; once a few women went by laughing in the hallway, clear high voices ringing with hilarity. Laurence by degrees grew conscious of a heaviness, a moisture in the air, an increase of warmth, and Tharkay looking around caught his eye and nodded, beckoning.

Laurence crept to his side: through a latticework screen they were looking upon a high, well-lit marble hallway. “Yes, that’s where we saw them coming out,” Dunne whispered, pointing at a tall narrow archway; the floor around it was shining and damp.

Tharkay touched a finger to his lips and motioned them back into the darkness; he crept away, vanishing for minutes that seemed endless, then coming back whispered, “I have found the way down; but there are guards.”

Four of the black eunuchs stood in their uniforms at the base of the stairs, idle and drowsy with the late hour, speaking to one another and paying no real attention; but there was no easy way to come towards them without being seen and raising the alarm. Laurence opened his cartridge box and ripped half-a-dozen of the pistol-balls out of their paper twists, scattering the powder upon the ground; they hid to either side of the head of the stairs, and he let the balls go rolling down the stairs, clattering and ringing bright against the smooth marble.

More puzzled than alarmed, the guards came up to investigate and bent low over the black powder; Granby sprang forward, even as Laurence began to give the word, and clubbed one with his pistol-butt; Tharkay another, with a single swift blow to the temple with the pommel of his knife, and lowered him easily to the ground. The third, Laurence caught around the throat with his arm, choking him to silence and then to stillness, but the last, a big man, barrel-chested and thick-necked, managed a strangled shout past Digby’s grasp before Martin struck him down.

They stood all panting, listening, but no reply came, no sound of roused vigilance. They bundled the guards into the dark corner where they themselves had been concealed, and tied and gagged them with their neckcloths.

“We must hurry now,” Laurence said, and they ran down the stairs and the empty vaulted hallway, their boots loud suddenly on the flagstones. The baths were empty, a great room of marble and stone, vaulted far above with delicate pointed arches of warm yellowed stone, great stone basins and golden spigots set in the wall, with dark wooden screens and little dressing alcoves in the many corners, and platforms of stone in the middle of the room, all of it slick with steam and water-beaded. Archways led out of the room all around, and puffs of steam were issuing into the room from vents set high in the walls; a single narrow stairway built of stone led them a winding way up to an iron door, hot to the touch.

They gathered themselves around and thrust it open, Granby and Tharkay jumping through at once, into a chamber almost scorching-hot and lit with a hellish orange-red glow. A squat many-legged furnace nearly filled the room together with a great boiling-cauldron of shining copper, pipes snaking away and vanishing into the walls, a heap of wood lying beside it to feed the roaring maw, and next to it a brazier of freshly laid coals was just beginning to catch and blaze, little open flames licking up to heat a hanging bowl of stones. Two black slaves naked to the waist stood staring; one held a long-handled ladle full of water, which he had been pouring over the hot stones, and the other an iron poker with which he was stirring the coals.

Granby caught the first and with Martin’s help wrestled him to the ground, muffling his sounds; but the second whipped his red-hot poker around and jabbed at Tharkay frantically, opening his mouth to yell; Tharkay gave a queer choked grunt and caught the man’s arm, pushing away the poker, and Laurence sprang to clap his hand over the shout; Digby clubbed him.

“Are you all right?” Laurence asked sharply; Tharkay had smothered the little flame which had caught in his trousers with the tails of his coat, but he was putting no weight on his right leg, and leaning with drawn face against the wall; there was a smell of blackened and roasting flesh.

Tharkay said nothing, jaw locked shut, but waved off concern, pointing; a small barred door of ironwork lattice stood behind the furnace, red rust weeping down the bars, and within the slightly cooler chamber behind, in great nests of silken cloth, lay a dozen dragon eggs. The gate was hot to the touch, but Fellowes took out a few wide pieces of leather, and so shielding their hands, Laurence and Granby lifted aside the bar and swung open the door.

Granby ducked inside and went to the eggs, lifting aside the silk and touching the shells with loving care. “Oh, here’s our beauty,” he said reverently, uncovering one of a dusty reddish hue, speckled lightly with green. “That’s our Kazilik all right; and eight weeks at most by the feel of it, we are none too soon.” He covered it up again, and with great care he and Laurence lifted it off its perch, silken swaddling and all, and carried it out into the furnace-room where Fellowes and Digby began to lash it into the leather straps.

“Only look at them,” Granby said, turning back to survey the rest of the eggs, stroking their shells lightly with the tips of his fingers. “What the Corps would give for the lot. But these are the ones we were promised; an Alaman, that’s one of their light-combat fellows, this one,” he indicated the smallest of the eggs, a pale lemon-yellow half the size of a man’s chest, “and the Akhal-Teke is a middle-weight,” a cream-colored egg spotted with red and orange, nearly twice the size.

They all worked now to get the straps on, putting them over the silk coverings, buckling them tight with hands slipping on the leather; they were all of them pouring sweat, great dark stains coming through the backs of their coats. They had closed the door again to work in concealment, and despite the narrow windows, the room was nearly an oven to bake them in alive.

Abruptly voices came in through the vents: they halted with their hands still on the straps, and then a louder voice came through more clearly, a call in a woman’s voice. “More steam,” Tharkay translated, whispering, and Martin snatched up the ladle and poured some water from the standing basin up and onto the stones; but the clouds of steam did not all go through the vents, and made the room almost impossible to see.

“We must make a dash for it: down the stairs and out the nearest archway, and make for any open air you see,” Laurence said quietly, looking to be sure they had all heard.

“I’m no hand in a fight; I’ll take the Kazilik,” Fellowes said, leaving the rest of his leather in a heap on the floor. “Strap it to my back; and Mr. Dunne can help steady me.”

“Very good,” Laurence said, and told Martin and Digby off to the Akhal-Teke and the smaller Alaman; he and Granby drew their swords, and Tharkay, who had bound up his leg with some of the leather scraps, took out his knife: there would be no relying on their guns, after they had been soaking a quarter-of-an-hour together in the thick and humid atmosphere.

“Keep all together,” he said, and threw all the rest of the water in one great heave onto the hot stones and the coals themselves, and kicked open the door.

The great white billows of hissing steam carried them down the stairs and out into the baths; they were halfway to the archway before the air cleared enough to make anything out at all. Then the trailing steam blew away and Laurence found himself staring at an exquisitely beautiful woman, perfectly naked and holding an ewer full of water; her complexion was the exact color of milky tea, and her hair in long shining-wet ebony ropes was her only cover; she stared at him with extraordinarily large sea-green eyes, rimmed in brown, at first in confusion; and then she gave a piercing shriek, rousing all the other women too: more than a dozen of them, equally beautiful though of wholly different style, and all of their voices ringing out in wild and musical alarm.

“Oh, Christ,” Laurence said; deeply ashamed, he caught her by the shoulders, firmly set her out of the way, and dashed on to the archway, his men following after him. More of the guards were running into the room from the far sides, and two came nearly running directly into Laurence’s and Granby’s faces.

They were taken aback too much to swing at once, and Laurence was able to knock the sword out of his opposite’s hand and kick it away skittering over the floor. Together Laurence and Granby shoved them backwards and out into the hall, all of them half-slipping on the slick floors, and they burst out into the hallway and ran for the stairs, the two guards, knocked down, calling to their fellows.

Laurence and Granby ducked under Tharkay’s arms and helped him go limping up the stairs; the others were burdened with the eggs; yet all of them still went at great speed, the pursuit boiling up furiously behind them, and the women’s screams attracting still more attention. Running footsteps approaching from ahead warned them their original route had been cut off; instead Tharkay said sharply, “Go eastward, that way,” and they turned down another hallway to flee.

A draught of cold air, desperately welcome, came into their faces as they ran; and they emerged from a small marble cloister into an open-air quadrangle, all the windows blazing around them; Granby at once dropped to one knee and fired up his signal-flares: one and the next refused to go, too wet to fire, and cursing he flung the inert cylinders to the ground, but the third, which had been tucked more deeply into his shirt, at last went off, and the blue glittering trail went smoking up into the black sky.

Then they had to put down the eggs and turn and fight: the first guards were upon them, shouting, more spilling out of the building. One small grace, that for fear of damaging the eggs the Turkish guards had not resorted to their own guns, and were cautious in pressing too closely, trusting to their weight of numbers to overcome the invaders with only a little patience. Laurence struggled to hold off one of the guards, deflecting one blow and then another to either side; he was counting the moments in wingbeats, but he had scarcely reached half his expected total before Temeraire, roaring, swept down over the court, the great wind of his passage nearly flattening them all.

The guards scrambled back, crying out. There was not room for Temeraire to land without crushing the buildings, perhaps bringing them down, but Celestials could hover; his wings beating mightily, Temeraire kept almost directly above them. The thunder of his wings sent loosened bits of brick and stone crumbling down into the courtyard, and the many windows around the court were shattering in sharp explosive bursts, littering the ground with razor shards.

Cables were being flung down to them by the crew already aboard. They frantically tied on the eggs and sent them up, to be stowed away in the belly-rigging; Fellowes did not even take off his precious burden, but let himself be bundled aloft still lashed to the egg and thrust into the belly-netting, many hands reaching to latch his carabiners onto the harness.

“Hurry, hurry,” Temeraire called loudly; the alarm was truly given now, horns blowing wildly in the distance, more flares firing up into the sky, and then from the gardens to the north rose a terrible roaring, and a great jet of flame scorched glowing red upon the sky: the Kaziliks were rising into the air, spiraling up through their own smoke and flame. Laurence heaved Dunne up into the reaching hands of the bellmen and jumped for the rigging himself.

“Temeraire, we are aboard, go!” he shouted, dangling by his hands; the bellmen were helping them all get latched on, and Therrows had Laurence’s carabiners in hand. Below, the guards were returning with rifles in hand, caution giving way with the eggs so nearly lost to them; they were forming into a company, their rifles aimed together to a single point, the only likely way to injure a dragon with musket-fire.

Temeraire gathered himself, wings sweeping forward, and with a great thrust he was moving straight up and up, heaving himself aloft and higher. Digby cried out, “The egg, ’ware the egg,” and lunged for it: the little lemon-yellow Alaman egg, its silk coverings caught on some protrusion on the ground and unfurling in a long glorious red ribbon from underneath the leather straps, leaving the soft, moisture-slick egg too loose in its harness.

Digby’s grasping fingers caught on the shell; but still it slid free, easing out between the leather straps and the belly-netting, and he let go the harness and caught it with his other hand. His carabiners dangling loose were not yet latched on. “Digby!” Martin cried, reaching for him; but Temeraire’s leap could not be arrested: they were already above the roof and rising still with the force of his great wing-stroke, and Digby fell away startled and open-mouthed, still holding the egg against his breast.

Together the boy and the egg fell tumbling through the air and smashed together upon the courtyard stones, amidst the shouting guards. Digby’s arms lay flung wide against the white marble, the curled and half-formed serpentine body of the dragonet in the burst ruins of the shell, and the lantern-light shone grisly upon their small broken bodies lying in a slick of blood and egg-slime, as Temeraire lifted still higher and away.

Chapter 10

A LONG AND desperate flight, then, to the Austrian border; all of them sick at heart and only the urgency of the moment keeping them from an indulgence of their grief. Temeraire flung himself onward through the night without speaking, without answering to Laurence’s soft calls except to keen back his misery, and behind them a holocaust of fire raged, the wrath of the Kazilik dragons striped across the sky, trying to find them.

The moon had set; they flew on with no light but the clouded stars, and an occasional risked sliver of lantern-light to see the compass by. Temeraire’s midnight hide was nearly invisible in the dark, and his ears pricked sharp for the sound of dragon wings. Three times he veered away to one side or another as faster couriers dashed by, carrying the alarm outwards: all the countryside raised against them. But all the while they surged on, Temeraire stretching to the limits of his speed as he had never before done, the cupped wing-strokes like flashing oars dipping into the night, driving them on.

Laurence did not try to hold him back; there was no exhilaration or battle-fever, now, which on other occasions might have driven Temeraire to exceed the bounds of his own endurance. Impossible, too, to be sure how quickly they were going; beneath them all was darkness but the occasional faint glow of a chimney, flashing by. They huddled all silent and close against Temeraire’s body, out of the lashing wind.

The eastern edge of the night, behind them, was beginning to shine a paler blue; the stars were going out. No use in urging Temeraire to greater speed; if they could not reach the border before dawn, they would have to hide, somehow, until the following night; there would be no getting across during the day.

“Sir, I make a light there,” Allen said, breaking the silence, his voice stifled and still thick with tears; he pointed away and north. One after another the torchlight glimmers came into view: a thin necklace of lights strung along the border, and the low wrathful roaring of dragons, calling one to the other in frustration. They were flying along the border in small formations, back and forth like wheeling birds, all of them roused and peering into the darkness.

“They haven’t any night-flyers; they are only venturing a shot in the dark,” Granby said softly into Laurence’s ear, cupping his hand around the noise. Laurence nodded.

The agitation of the Turkish dragons had roused the Austrian border as well; on the far bank of the Danube, Laurence could see a fortification not far distant, set on a hill and fully illuminated; he touched Temeraire’s side, and when Temeraire looked around, his great eyes shining and liquid in the dark, Laurence pointed him at it silently.

Temeraire nodded; he did not go straight at the border, but flew parallel to the line of fortifications a while, watching the Turkish dragons in their flights; now and again the crews did even go so far as to fire off a rifle into the dark, likely more for the little satisfaction of making a noise than in real hopes of striking a target. They were sending up flares occasionally, but it was hopeless, with miles of border, to illuminate it all.

Temeraire gave them only the warning of muscles suddenly gathered; Laurence pulled down Allen and the other lookout, Harley, and stayed low to Temeraire’s neck himself, and then Temeraire was driving himself forward with short rapid-fire strokes, building up a great deal of speed; ten dragon-lengths from the border he ceased to beat his wings at all, leaving them wide-extended, and drew in a great heaving breath that distended out his sides; gliding he went straight across at one of the dark places between the outposts, and the torches to either side did not so much as gutter.

He did not beat up again for as long as he could; they drifted so low to the ground that Laurence smelled fresh pine-needles before at last Temeraire risked a fresh stroke and then another, to lift himself clear of the tree-tops. He went to north of the Austrian fort, better than a mile, before he came around again; the Turkish border now was more clearly visible against the sky growing paler, and there was no sign they had been noticed in their crossing: the dragons were continuing their search-flights.

Still they had to get under cover before light; Temeraire was too large to easily hide in the countryside. “Run up the colors and hang out a white flag with them, Mr. Allen,” Laurence said. “Temeraire, get in and land as quick as you can; better to have them make a noise inside the walls than on our approach.”

Temeraire’s head was hanging low; he had flown harder than perhaps ever before in his life, and after earlier exertion and grief; his wingbeats were slow now not from caution but from exhaustion. But he drew himself up without complaint for one last sprint: he flung himself up towards the fort and over its walls in a desperate heave, and came down heavily in the courtyard, swaying upon his haunches, scattering in terror a troop of cavalry-horses on one side, and a company of infantrymen on the other, all of them yelling wildly as they fled.

“Hold your fire!” Laurence bellowed out of his speaking-trumpet, then repeated it in French, standing up to wave the British flag. He won some hesitation from the Austrians, and in the pause Temeraire sighed and settled back upon his haunches, head drooping forward over his breast, and said, “Oh, I am so very tired.”

Colonel Eigher provided them coffee and beds, and for Temeraire one of the horses which had in its frenzy broken a leg; the rest were hurriedly taken outside the walls of the fort and left in a paddock under guard. Laurence slept through until the afternoon, and rose from his cot still half-submerged in the murk of sleep, while outside Temeraire continued to snore in a manner which would certainly have given him away even to the Turks half-a-mile distant across the border, if he had not been curled up securely behind the thick wooden walls of the fort.

“They mean to dance to Bonaparte’s fiddle, do they?” Eigher said, when given a fuller account of their adventure than Laurence had been able to muster up the previous night; his own preoccupation, quite naturally, with the state of relations his nation might expect with her neighbors. “Much joy may they get of him.”

He gave Laurence a good dinner, and some sympathy; but he had little to spare. “I would send you on to Vienna,” he said, pouring yet another glass of wine, “but God in Heaven, I would be serving you an ill turn. It shames me to say, but there are creatures calling themselves men who would serve you to Bonaparte on a platter; and bend both their knees to him while they were at it.”

Laurence said quietly, “I am very grateful for the shelter you have given us, sir, and I would not for all the world embarrass you or your country; I know you are at peace with the French.”

“At peace,” Eigher said, bitterly. “We are cowering at their feet, you may say; and with more truth.”

By the end of the meal he had drunk nearly three bottles; and the slowness with which the wine had any effect upon him betrayed that this was no irregular occurrence. He was a gentleman, but of no high estate, which had limited his advancement and his postings beneath, Laurence suspected, what his competence might have deserved; but it was not resentment drove him to drink but a misery which found voice as the evening drew on, and the combination of brandy and company further unbridled his tongue.

Austerlitz was his demon; he had served under General Langeron in the fatal battle. “The devil gave us the Pratzen Heights,” he said, “and the town itself; took his men out of the best ground deliberately and played at a retreat, and why? So that we would fight him. He had then fifty thousand men, and we ninety, with the Russians; and he was luring us to battle.” Humorlessly he laughed. “And why not give them to us? He took them back easily enough, a few days later.” He waved his hand over the map-table, on which he had laid out a tableau of the battle: a task which had taken him scarcely ten minutes, though he was already thoroughly taken in drink.

Laurence, for his part, had not drunk enough to numb his appalled reaction; he had learned of the great disaster at Austerlitz while already at sea, on his way to China, and only in the vaguest terms; the intervening months had given him no better information, and he had by stages allowed himself to believe the victory exaggerated. Eigher’s tin soldiers and wooden dragons in their stately array made a deeply unpleasant impression as the colonel moved them about.

“He let us entertain ourselves by beating upon his right a little while, until we had emptied our center,” Eigher said, “and then they appeared: fifteen dragons and twenty thousand men. He had brought them up by forced marches, and not a whisper we had of their coming. We limped on another few hours, the Russian Imperial Guard cost them some blood, but that was the end of it.”

Reaching out he tipped over a little mounted figure with a commander’s baton, and lay back in his chair, his eyes shut. Laurence picked up one of the little dragon-figures, turning it over in his hands; he did not know what to say.

“Emperor Francis went and begged him for peace the next morning,” Eigher said after a little while. “The Holy Roman Emperor, bowing to a Corsican who snatched himself a crown.” His voice was thick, and he did not speak again but fell slowly into a stupor.

Laurence left Eigher sleeping and went out to Temeraire, now awake and no less unhappy. “Digby would be bad enough,” Temeraire said, “but we have killed that dragonet, too, and it did not have anything to do with all of this; it did not choose to be sold to us, or to be kept back by the Turks, and it could not get away.”

He had curled himself brooding around the two remaining eggs, keeping them cuddled against his body, perhaps by instinct, and occasionally putting out his long forked tongue to touch the shells. He only with reluctance admitted even Laurence and Keynes to examine them, and kept hovering so close that the dragon-surgeon impatiently said, “Get your bloody head out of the way, will you; I cannot see anything with you blocking all the light.”

Keynes tapped the shells lightly, pressed his ear to the surface and listened, wetted a finger and rubbed them a little and brought it to his mouth. When he was satisfied with his examination, he stepped away again, and Temeraire drew his coils more snugly back around the eggs and looked anxiously to hear his verdict.

“Well, they are in good form, and have taken no harmful chill,” Keynes said. “We had better keep them wrapped up in the silk, and,” he jerked his thumb at Temeraire, “it will do them no harm to have him playing nursemaid. The middle-weight is in no immediate danger at all; by the sound I should say the dragonet is not yet formed; we might have months to wait there. But for the Kazilik, no more than eight weeks, and no less than six; there is not a moment to lose in getting it home.”

“Austria is not safe, nor the German states, with French troops thick on the ground as they are,” Laurence said. “I mean to go northward, through Prussia; a week and a half should see us to the coast, and from there a few days’ flight to Scotland.”

“Whichever way you go, you should go quickly; I will contrive to delay my report to Vienna a little, so you are out of the country before those damned politicians can think of some way they can make use of you to shame Austria a little more,” Eigher said, when Laurence spoke to him again, that evening. “I can give you safe-conduct to the border. But should you not go by sea?”

“It would cost us at least another month, going around by Gibraltar, and we would have to find shelter along the Italian coast a good deal of the way,” Laurence said. “I know the Prussians have accommodated Bonaparte heretofore, but do you think they will go so far as to surrender us to him?”

“Surrender you? No,” Eigher said. “They are going to war.”

“Against Napoleon?” Laurence exclaimed; that was a piece of good news he had not expected to hear. The Prussians had long been the finest fighting force in Europe; if only they had joined the earlier coalition in time, surely the outcome would have been very different, and their entry into the struggle now seemed to him a great victory for Napoleon’s enemies. But it was plain Eigher saw nothing to be pleased with in this intelligence.

“Yes, and when he has trampled them into the dirt, and the Russians with them, there will be no one left at all in Europe to restrain him,” the colonel said.

Laurence kept his opinion of this pessimism to himself. The news made his own heart lift gladly, but an Austrian officer, no matter how passionately he hated Bonaparte, might well not desire to see the Prussian Army succeed where his own had failed. “At least they will have no motive to delay our journey,” he said tactfully.

“Go fast and keep ahead of the fighting, or Bonaparte will delay you himself,” Eigher said.

The next evening they set out again under cover of dark. Laurence had left several letters with Eigher to be sent on to Vienna and thence to London, though he hoped his own road home would be quicker; but in case of any accident, their progress so far should at least be known, and the situation with the Ottoman Empire.

His report to the Admiralty, laboriously encoded in the year-old ciphers which were all he had to hand, had taken on a more wooden tone than usual. It was not guilt precisely; he was perfectly convinced in his own mind of the justice of his actions, but he was conscious how the whole might appear to a hostile judge: a reckless and imprudent adventure, unsanctioned by any authority higher than himself, entered into on the slightest of evidence. Easy enough to make the change in the sentiments of the Turks the consequence rather than the cause of the theft.

And it could not be defended as a question of duty; no one would ever call it a man’s duty to perform so wild and desperate a mission, with profound implications for relations with a foreign power, without orders; it could even be called quite the contrary. Nor was he the sort of sophist who could bald-faced point at Lenton’s orders to bring the eggs home and call that justification. There was none, indeed, but urgency; the more sensible reply, in every possible way, would have been an immediate return home, to place the tangled matter into the hands of the Ministry.

He was not sure whether he would have approved his own actions, hearing of them secondhand; just the sort of wild behavior the world expected of aviators, and indeed, perhaps there was something to it; he did not know whether he would have risked so much, knowing himself subject to serve at the pleasure of the Navy. If deliberate, a paltry sort of caution that would be; but no, he had never consciously chosen the politic course; there was only something quite distinct in being captain to a living dragon who entered wholly into his engagements and who was not to be given or taken away by the will of other men. Laurence was uneasily forced to consider whether he might be in danger of beginning to think himself above authority.

“Myself, I do not see what is so wonderful about authority at all,” Temeraire said, when Laurence ventured to disclose his anxiety that morning as they settled down for a rest; they had encamped in a clearing high upon the leeward side of a mountain slope, untended but for a handful of former sheep now roasting under Gong Su’s careful hand in a fire-pit which did not give off much smoke, the better to avoid notice.

“It seems to me that it is only forcing people to do things which they do not wish to do, and which they cannot be persuaded to do, with threats,” he continued. “I am very glad we are above it. I would not at all be pleased if someone could take you away from me and make me have another captain, like a ship.”

Laurence could hardly quarrel with this, and while he might have argued the description of authority, he could not, feeling too false in so doing; he plainly did like being free of restraint at least so far, and if he were ashamed of it he might at least not lie about it. “Well; I suppose it is true any man would be a tyrant an he could,” he said ruefully. “All the better reason to deny Bonaparte any more power than he already has.”

“Laurence,” Temeraire said thoughtfully, “why do people do as he says, when he is so unpleasant a person? And dragons too.”

“Oh; well, I do not know he is an unpleasant man in his person,” Laurence admitted. “His soldiers love him at least, though that is scarcely to be marveled at, when he keeps winning wars for them; and he must have some charm, to have risen so high.”

“Then why is it so terrible that he should have authority, if someone must have it?” Temeraire asked. “I have not heard that the King has ever won any battles, after all.”

“The King’s authority is nothing like,” Laurence answered. “He is the head of the State, but he does not have absolute power; no man in Britain does. Bonaparte has no restraint, no check upon his will; and such gifts as he has he uses only to serve himself. The King and his ministers are all in the end the servants of our nation first, before themselves; at any rate, so the best of them are.”

Temeraire sighed, and did not pursue the discussion further, but listlessly curled himself up with the eggs again, leaving Laurence to gaze on him with anxiety. It was not only the unhappy loss; the death of any of his crew always left Temeraire distressed, but rather in frustrated anger than this dragging lethargy; and Laurence feared deeply that the true cause was rather their disagreement over the question of dragon liberties; a more profound disappointment, and one which time would not lay to rest.

He might try and describe for Temeraire a little of the slow political work of emancipation, the long years Wilberforce had already spent nudging one partial act and then another forward through Parliament, and how they were still laboring to ban even the trade; but that seemed to him poor consolation to offer, and not much use as a model: so slow and calculated a progress would never recommend itself to Temeraire’s eager soul, and they would have little time to pursue politics while engaged in their duties in any case.

But some hope, he increasingly felt, he must somehow discover; for all that he could not put aside his conviction of their duty to put the war effort first, he could not easily bear to see Temeraire so cast-down.

The Austrian countryside was green and golden with the ripening harvest, and the flocks were fat and contented, at least until Temeraire got his claws upon them; they saw no other dragons and faced no challenge. They crossed into Saxony and moved steadily northward another two days, still with no sign of the mobilizing army; until at last they crossed over one of the last swelling foothills of the final ridges of the Erz Gebirge mountains and came abruptly upon the vast encampment swelling out of the town of Dresden: seventy thousand men or more, and nearly two dozen dragons sprawling in the valley beside.

Laurence belatedly gave the order to have the flag hung out, as below the alarm was raised and men went running to their guns, crews to their dragons; the British flag brought them a very different reception, however, and Temeraire was waved down to a hastily cleared place in the makeshift covert.

“Keep the men aboard,” Laurence told Granby. “I hope we need not stop long; we could make another hundred miles today.” He swung himself down the harness to the ground, mentally composing his explanations and requests in French, and brushed ineffectually at the worst of his dirt.

“Well, it is about damned time,” a voice said, in crisp English. “Now where the devil are the rest of you?”

Laurence turned and stared blankly: a British officer was standing before him, scowling, and snapping his crop against his leg. Laurence would hardly have been more astonished to meet a Piccadilly fish-merchant in the same circumstances. “Good God, are we mobilizing also?” he asked. “I beg your pardon,” he added, belatedly recollecting himself. “Captain William Laurence, of Temeraire, at your service, sir.”

“Oh; Colonel Richard Thorndyke, liaison officer,” the colonel said. “And what do you mean; you know damned well we have been waiting for you lot.”

“Sir,” Laurence said, ever more bewildered, “I think you have mistaken us for another company; you cannot have been expecting us. We are come from China by way of Istanbul; my latest orders are months old.”

“What?” Now it was Thorndyke’s turn to stare, and with growing dismay. “Do you mean to tell me you are alone?”

“As you see us,” Laurence said. “We have only stopped to ask safe-passage; we are on our way to Scotland, on urgent business for the Corps.”

“Well, what more urgent business than the bloody war the Corps has, I should damned well like to know!” Thorndyke said.

“For my part, sir,” Laurence said angrily, “I should like to know what occasion justifies such a remark about my service.”

“Occasion!” Thorndyke exclaimed. “Bonaparte’s armies on the horizon, and you ask me what occasion there is! I have been waiting for twenty dragons who ought have been here two months ago; that is the bloody occasion.”