Blood of Tyrants

“Of course not,”Junichiro said, bitterly; he was brushing his own garments clean as best he could. “I heard my master tell Lady Arikawa you were too much of a coward to take an honorable death. There was no course of honor left for him. If he gave you up for torture to the magistrate, he would have failed in his vow; and he could not disobey the bakufu to protect you. What else was there to do?”

“What was this vow?” Laurence demanded. “Why would he have sworn an oath to aid a perfect stranger?”

“He made the vow to Jizo,” Junichiro said shortly, “who guards travelers, to ask him to look after his wife and son.”

His manner did not invite further inquiry. But Laurence recalled the silence of the house, the absence of a chatelaine, Kaneko’s black clothing, and thought he might understand: a wife lost in childbirth, and the child with her. Enough cause, surely, for a man to seek the consolation of religion, and to hold the oath he had made for their sake more dear than a mere promise to be put aside when inconvenient.

“So I will keep you alive, and get you away,” Junichiro went on. “My master will not have disobeyed the law; he will not have brought shame on Lady Arikawa and his own family: the guilt will be on my own head.”

Laurence shook his head in dismay: it was a solution which he felt could only have appealed to the excessive optimism of a young man, a wish to be the hero of the piece. “Unless that magistrate is a fool, he will hold your master accountable for your actions, and you will have only gained a crime to your account and his,” he said.

“He cannot,” Junichiro said. “Kaneko is my teacher, not my lord. I am not yet sworn to service. My family were—ronin.” Laurence did not recognize the word, but Junichiro looked away and spoke as though ashamed. “He took me in. When my training was complete, he meant to present me to Lady Arikawa, to see if she would—” His voice died away, and he swallowed visibly: a dream plainly now lost. He straightened. “My family are dead. The shame of my behavior falls only on myself, not on him,” he said. “Why do you think Lady Arikawa let us escape?”

Laurence paused and looked at him doubtfully. He had credited good fortune for the improbable success of their flight, but he could scarcely deny that a deliberate impulse on the part of their deadly pursuer was compellingly more plausible. “If so,” he said slowly, “then you have achieved your aim. Listen: let me bind you here. That dragon will free you. You can tell them that I forced you to assist me—”

“And shame myself twice over, lying, and saying I yielded to you to preserve my life?” Junichiro said, with perfect scorn. “In any case,” he added, “you will never get to Nagasaki alone; and there will be no use in my having aided you this far, if I do not get you away,” he added, and there was enough likely truth to that, to force Laurence to silence.

He could not like taking a clear advantage of the boy, even if Junichiro had chosen his own course: he was too much a young enthusiast to be trusted to make that choice clear-headedly. Even granting that the maneuver would spare Kaneko, Laurence could well imagine that gentleman’s feelings on finding his young student had thus immolated himself to spare him; he knew what his own would have been, under similar circumstances.

But there was no answer to be made to Junichiro’s refusing to lie: Laurence indeed could hardly encourage him to do so, when answered in such terms. The only saving grace was knowing the boy an orphan: at least he had not riven him away from family as well as home. Laurence could give him a place aboard ship—if they could either of them get to the ship, which was certainly more likely with Junichiro’s guidance than without it. And if they could not, Laurence knew what his own fate would be; he could hardly imagine that Junichiro’s would be any more merciful.

A low bubbling roar came from the river below, and Laurence looked down the hill from the temple to see the dragon emerge—at least, he thought it was the same dragon, but she had swelled out to nearly thrice her size, so wide that her very hide was stretched to a paler greenish silver. Laurence watched in astonishment as she spouted a great fountaining of water like a cascade that took illumination from the descending sun. The torrent of water continued a long time, the dragon reducing by degrees to her smaller size as she brought it forth.

“What sort of a dragon is she?” Laurence asked Junichiro.

“A river-dragon,” Junichiro said, his tone implying strongly Laurence was a fool who required having the simplest of matters explained. “Like Lord Jinai!” the boy added pointedly, seeing Laurence had not followed.

“She is the same breed as that monster?” Laurence said, incredulous: the scale was so very different he could scarcely credit it.

“She cannot get big until she goes down to the ocean, of course,” Junichiro said.

The water-dragon padded back up the hill towards them, stopping by the temple doorway to shake herself free of droplets again in a fine spray. “Now then,” she said, stepping inside and ducking her great head beneath the lintel: Laurence recognized now the kinship between her appearance and the sea-dragon’s, where her lines would spread out, as she grew in size. “I have refreshed myself, and I am ready to hear more of this Shakespeare.”

Junichiro seated himself at once, as though this remark had the force of a command; Laurence hesitated, then said, “Madam, I beg your pardon: we cannot stay.”

The dragon paused in the act of settling herself and regarded him with blank astonishment; Junichiro stared at him so appalled that Laurence supposed he had committed some enormous solecism. The sensation was discomfiting, but not so far, he was grimly certain, as would be their discovery and inevitable pursuit.

“We are bound for Nagasaki,” he said firmly, “and cannot delay in our journey. I beg your pardon most sincerely if I do not express myself in the accepted mode, from unfamiliarity,” he added. “I assure you I mean no offense.”

The dragon sat for a moment, blinking; she seemed less offended than perplexed. “The river flows to the sea, whatever the wind says about it,” she said, and reached up and rubbed a talon over some of the great swinging tendrils from her forehead, thoughtfully. “You have a long journey ahead,” she said eventually. “Stay the night! In the morning we will go together, down to the Ariake Sea. You will not have so far to go from there.”

Laurence had no notion of the geography, but he could well imagine that a dragon-back ride would speed their journey. He glanced at Junichiro, who wore a peculiar expression of mortification and longing mingled; as though Laurence had brazenly committed a crime, and been rewarded for it instead of condemned. He at least showed no disposition to reject the offer; and to be fair, Laurence did not see how it was to be refused. “Ma’am, I am honored by your condescension,” Laurence said, bowing, and seated himself reluctantly again.

Hammond’s boat rowed back three hours later, swiftly crossing from the harbor. Despite his avowed distrust, Temeraire could not help but watch her approach anxiously. The Potentate was very far from land, for the sake of her draught, and there were a great many small boats going to and fro in the harbor before them, betwixt which Temeraire could make no distinction. Captain Blaise came to the dragondeck and stood watching them for some time with his glass as Hammond’s boat came nearer, and he said to Granby, “Well, it will be hot work, if they do try for us.”

“Whatever do you mean?” Temeraire said, peering down.

“They have loaded up those boats there with tinder,” Granby answered him, shading his eyes to peer at the shore. “They may come out and have a go at setting us afire, we think.”

“What?” Iskierka said, rearing up her head abruptly, her eyes going very wide. “What? How dare they! I will go and fire them, at once!”

“Oh, no, you shan’t,” Granby said firmly. “Not until we have seen what they mean to do; you cannot blame them for having a lookout, when a transport loaded to the brim comes creeping into their harbor.”

When Hammond had been put back aboard—he was so unhandy about coming up the side that Churki would no longer have it, pronouncing it a ludicrous and unnecessary risk, and insisted on reaching down to lift him up herself out of the launch—he did not say anything at all of Laurence, and nothing to reassure about the egg, either.

“The worst news imaginable,” he said. “I had private conversation of Mr. Doeff, who is the commissioner here, and good God! Do you know a ship called the Phaeton?”

“Lost in the Pacific, two years ago,” Captain Blaise said, automatically.

Laurence had thought well of Blaise—had called him a respectable and a sensible man, but in Temeraire’s private opinion he was only a block: not the least imagination or interest as far as Temeraire had been able to discover in nearly the full year of their acquaintance. He was not afraid of dragons, which was the best Temeraire could say of him, and indeed he made a point of taking the air upon the dragondeck every day—after making a punctilious request of the most senior aviator on deck for the liberty—as a sort of gesture to reassure the hands. But his head was full of nothing but the NavalChronicle; he had no other conversation but the weather, and that was not very much use as he insisted on always saying the prospect was very fair, even when it was plainly coming on to a three-days’ blow.

“Pellew’s second boy had her, if I recall aright, and she was looking in at the Dutch trade last anyone heard of her,” Blaise added now. “Likely she went down in a gale—” and stopped as Hammond shook his head.

“She was sunk here,” he said, “—here, after coming in under false colors, taking hostage two of the Dutch officials who went out to greet her, and threatening to fire the shipping in the harbor if the Japanese did not supply them. Her captain must have been a lunatic,” he added bitterly.

The uproar this produced, Hammond had evidently not expected. He had meant to convey that the Japanese were not in the least pleased with the British, and that they naturally thought the Potentate had come to make a fuss over the sinking of the Phaeton. In this he had succeeded, but was dismayed to discover that Captain Blaise would have liked to confirm all the worst fears the Japanese might have entertained. When Hammond had finished, Blaise walked to and fro along the deck for an hour altogether in great fury, repeating that it was more than a dog could bear, that they should have sunk a British ship and receive no answer, even in the face of all Hammond’s increasingly anxious remonstrations.

He was only at last persuaded to go inside to write a report of it to the Admiralty; Hammond turned at once to the dragondeck, so he might corner Captain Harcourt, who was senior, and try to make repairs by urgently pressing her in turn to disavow any possibility of action.

“Hammond, I haven’t the least wish to start us another war in some hasty fashion,” she said at last, in some irritation, “but no-one can blame Blaise for being distressed, and I am so myself. It is all very well to say her captain was provoking: whose word do you have for that, but this Dutch fellow, whose trade he would have gone after?”

She walked away from his importunities, and at last Temeraire could pin Hammond down with a clawed foot laid down in his path, when he would have dashed away from the dragondeck at once again. “Oh—no, no, they do not know anything of Laurence,” Hammond said, distracted. “Pray will you move, I must go down and speak with Blaise again—”

“It is just as I thought,” Temeraire said savagely, without giving way, “you have done nothing at all and it was all falsehoods, your promises to look for Laurence: did you even ask them about him? And what is he to do, now, when you tell us they all hate the British here, and he is all alone, and we are hundreds of miles away? I ought have let this wretched ship sink,” he added, “and left you on it.”

“I hope to God I will not wish as much, soon enough!” Hammond cried, taken aback by his violence. “But I have asked, I give you my word, and Mr. Doeff has promised me he should inquire among the Japanese. But you must see under these circumstances I was forced to proceed with the greatest caution. Imagine if they should know his value as a hostage against us? So I have only said we had a shipwreck, and we would be glad to have any news at all of our sailors, if any sign had come up on the shore of any of them. I will bring you any word at once, I assure you: and pray consider that any opening of hostilities between us should certainly make his rescue a thousand times more difficult.”

He added this last urgently, and though of course Temeraire saw straight through this transparent piece of manipulation, he could not argue with it; neither could he do anything, for good or ill, to forward the matter. “Maximus,” he said, feeling quite desperate, when he had let Hammond go dashing away again towards the stern cabin, “I do not suppose you would go and look for Laurence? That sea-dragon cannot come out of the water. If you should keep away from the coast—”

But, “Enough of that,” Churki said, overhearing. “Maximus had much better stay where he is, and you had much better eat another bowl of soup and take your medicine, so that when we do hear some word worth acting upon, you will then be able to do so. Do you suppose Laurence would be grateful if you have made yourself ill or lost one of our company, in the meantime, just to feel as though you were doing something when anyone can see there is nothing sensible to be done?”

This shot went uncomfortably home: Temeraire knew Laurence by no means approved of any rash or hasty action, and had spoken with him on several occasions about the need for sober reflection. “Particularly,” Laurence had said, “when you must know the others will often heed your advice and attend your requests: how much more should that trust increase your obligation to serve them well in such circumstances, by the exercise of restraint? You must be careful not to abuse it, in trying to persuade them into a course against their own interest or that of the nation, for your own benefit.”

And how eagerly Temeraire had agreed with him! He sank his head upon his forelegs. The truth was he did not know where to fly, even if he had been well enough to go himself; and besides that, Maximus was not the fellow anyone would have sent on a search mission. He would have to spend half of every day only hunting, and likely making all the people very angry for the quantity of food which he should be taking from them.

“But I cannot only lie here!” he burst out. “And do not tell me,” he added, “—do not dare to tell me that Laurence is dead, so I might as well do so. If he is dead, then I cannot see any reason I should not go to the devil any way I like.”

The water-dragon’s name was Lady Kiyomizu, although much to Junichiro’s horror she breezily told Laurence to call her Kiyo, and not to stand on formality. “You have no manners anyway,” she said, “and there is no sense your trying to put out sakura blossoms, when you are a bamboo.”

Laurence ruefully swallowed this friendly condemnation as the price of his rudeness: he was more than willing to accept it, in any case, to gain such assistance as she was ready to offer in exchange for the scraps of poetry and drama which he could dredge up out of his memory. Fortunately he had always cultivated literary entertainments on his ships, to improve both the education and conversation of his young gentlemen, and the spirit of his hands. They had only just concluded the performance of AMidsummerNight’s Dream, and on the King’s birthday last, Lieutenant Riley had given the officers a stirring rendition of the St. Crispin’s Day speech, which Laurence did his best to repeat now. Fortunately his cabin abutted Riley’s, and so he had heard the speech said over and over in the evenings for nearly a month beforehand.

“But I beg you will pardon me if you later learn I have mistaken any of the phrases,” he said. “I have not heard it since—” and stopped, for of course, he had not heard it in eight years gone and more.

Indeed the Reliant herself was surely no longer his at all. It would have been a peculiar career which after such a period should have left him in a prime frigate, and yet not seen him advanced to the command of a ship-of-the-line. Either an unlikely disgrace or promotion must inevitably have been his lot—and then he wondered suddenly if the transport herself was his, something in between the two.

He found it hard to sleep that night, searching for some scrap of memory to be a rope-line which he might have climbed to get a look at himself, past horizons which seemed empty all around. But nothing came to hand, and he felt ever more strongly the anxious sense of something lost; he put his hand into the bundle beneath his head and closed it around the hilt of the sword, the ray-skin familiar and not at once. He slept at last fitfully, ill-at-ease, and startled awake when footsteps came into the temple: an old woman carrying a steaming pot, and she screamed when she saw his face and dropped it, fleeing into the early dawn.

“Why, that is a pity,” Kiyo said, yawning tremendously: she seemed able to almost open her jaws in a straight line. “You have made her spill half the sake. Pour the rest in the bowl! It is a little early, but the morning is nice and wet. I do not mind getting up.”