Blood of Tyrants

“Master,” Junichiro said, “not for this. Not—”

Laurence watched them, disturbed: the young man’s voice was breaking, though Kaneko seemed as placid as a lake; he felt abruptly as awkward as though he had wandered into a stranger’s house, and found it full of family quarrels addressed only obliquely, through hints.

“I must write to Lady Arikawa,” Kaneko said, “and offer her my apologies. I see now that I have acted wrongly: I did not have the right to undertake an oath which might expose her to charges of disobedience to the bakufu. I regret that you must endure a delay in my answer,” he added to Laurence. “It must be her will, and not mine, whether I am permitted to fulfill my vow with honor by offering you assistance, and then make her my amends.”

“Pray Heaven she commands otherwise,” Junichiro said.

“You will desire no such thing,” Kaneko said, sharply, and after a moment, the young man looked away and muttered, “No.”

Kaneko nodded once, and then dismissed them both silently but pointedly by returning his attention to his writing-work as thoroughly as if he had been alone in the chamber.

Laurence hesitated, but the decision seemed made: he followed Junichiro’s shoulders, hunched forward a little as though he still felt his master’s reproof, back through the corridors to his own chamber. “I should like my own clothing again, at least,” he said abruptly, when they had reached the small room, and he had stepped inside, “if there is no objection to that.”

“If you wish to look like a ragged beggar, I suppose it can be accomplished,” Junichiro said, savagely, and closed the wall-panel behind him. But Laurence for the moment was as glad to be shut in with his own thoughts.

It seemed plain that the law here was inhospitable in the extreme to foreigners, and only some kind of vow—now-regretted—had impelled Kaneko to undertake the forms of charity towards him, evidently at real risk of his own disgrace. This Lady Arikawa, whoever she might be—perhaps his liege, certainly a person of authority—would be under no similar constraint. Kaneko might wish to leave his fate to the will of this lady, and so propitiate her, but Laurence felt not the slightest inclination to accommodate his plans. If return he owed, for hospitality so unwillingly given, then removing himself from the situation was all the return he was prepared to make.

The house was large, but hardly fortified, and he had seen only a few manservants. If the law generally barred the possession of blades, his own lack might not be an insurmountable obstacle if he could not get at the sword; although that, too, might be accomplished. The chief difficulty was not an escape, he thought, but its sequel. He could with an effort summon up the shape of the nation, on a chart, but he had never sailed this way in his life. If he had been asked to find Nagasaki by latitude and longitude, from memory, he might as well have made for Perdition straightaway.

But with any luck he could find his way back to the coast, whence perhaps some fisherman might be prevailed upon to carry him in secret to the port: and if he had not dreamt it in his delirium, the buttons of his coat had been gold. If not, in any case there might be a few coins in a pocket, or slipped through into the lining, if his things had not been pillaged.

They had not. Junichiro returned only a little while later with a servant trailing him, who set down on the floor just inside the room the bundle of clothing. And when the door had closed, and Laurence held the salt-stained and ruined clothes, he found the buttons, still firmly sewn on, were gold; and so, too, were the long narrow bars athwart each shoulder where the epaulettes had ought to be—

—and the coat itself was an aviator’s green.

The first order of business was plainly to get the ship afloat again: a ship sitting on rocks was of no use to anyone. “But shan’t the ocean get in, once those are underwater?” Lily said, her head tilted to examine the gaping holes where the rocks had pierced the hull and yet stood within, keeping the Potentate fixed upon the shoals.

“Oh! by no means,” Temeraire said. “They will patch it, with some timber and oakum, I believe; or perhaps with something else, it makes not a particle of difference. That is not our affair: that is for the sailors to worry about.”

He spoke with impatience, which he was aware Lily did not deserve, but he could not quite help himself. It was so very hard to stay here, especially when he was forced to overhear the officers, who insisted on speaking to one another in the certainty of Laurence’s death; even Granby, of whom Temeraire would have expected better, had only said to Hammond, “For Heaven’s sake, Hammond, let him think as he likes. It will take him dreadfully, when he does believe it.”

“Well, I am not going to believe it, so there,” Temeraire said, to himself; but it certainly did not improve his already-great anxiety to be away, searching for Laurence; and neither did Churki sitting there like a great unhelpful lump and wagging her head seriously and saying, “This is what comes of putting all your heart in just one person! Hammond, I should have mentioned before, I hope you are thinking of marriage, and do not fear that I am inclined to be unreasonable. As long as she is young enough to have a great many children, I will be very pleased, whatever your choice.”

Temeraire snorted: Churki might be considerably older, and very experienced from her service with the Incan army, but what did she know of it, anyway. He was quite done considering her opinion as particularly worthwhile; at least, on this subject.

But he very badly wished to go look for Laurence, anyway: and after all, there was no egg yet; there might not be an egg for days, and until there was an egg, it was none of his business but Iskierka’s, whatever she might say. And he would have gone, indeed—if only he could have persuaded himself that this explanation would hold the least weight with Laurence.

But Temeraire could just see himself trying to tell Laurence that he had left an egg on a ship swinging about on some rocks, with no-one to look after it but Iskierka. And not just any egg, but his very own egg and Iskierka’s: a Celestial and Kazilik cross, which Granby had said that very afternoon, to Captain Blaise, was likely worth more than the crown jewels of Britain—Temeraire had never seen these, but he was sure they must be impressive—and they must have a great deal of straw and a warm room set aside for it, if he pleased.

“But the ship is not in any real danger, at present,” Temeraire argued, to an imagined Laurence, “and after all if it did sink, we are close enough to fly to shore. And it is not only Iskierka to watch over it: there are Maximus and Lily, too, who would not let anything happen to the egg; and the rest of our formation, and Kulingile and Churki, besides. Really it would be extraordinary if anything should go wrong—”

But the vision of Laurence was unpersuaded, and only looked at him with gentle reproof: it was not their responsibility; it was his, and not to be pushed off onto someone else. Temeraire’s ruff drooped as he lost the argument with himself once again.

“Anyway,” he said to Lily now, out loud, with apology in his tone, “I am sure they will manage that part of the business perfectly well: so pray let us think how we are to get her off the rocks, instead.”

He had hoped, at first, that they might simply be able to lift the ship with all of them working together, but the ship’s master Mr. Ness had categorically made this impossible as a matter of weight. When he had worked the figures large enough to see clearly, Temeraire had been forced to admit as much: why on earth anyone had put five hundred tons of pig iron and another four hundred of shingle at the very bottom of the Potentate’s hold was quite a mystery to him, and he could not in the least work out how she stayed afloat ordinarily, but lifting her straight up by even an inch would certainly be beyond their power.

“If only we might rig a pulley!” he added again, but his best ingenuity had failed at contriving any way to establish a pulley in mid-air, above the ship, out in the middle of the ocean. “Or a lever—”

“Well, what about a lever?” Maximus said, gingerly sitting back on his haunches on the shoals, giving over his own attempts to inspect the holes: the ocean was too rough to see them from any distance. “That is only a stick, put underneath and pushed, ain’t it?” and Temeraire paused. He had been stopped, by the size of the ship, but perhaps—

“Where the devil are we to get a lever big enough to move her?” Mr. Ness called down at them, in exasperation. “Why, it should have to be taller than Babel.”

“We do not want one lever,” Temeraire said, with a sudden burst of inspiration. “We want three: one for me, and Maximus, and Kulingile, all to push on at once; and we will get trees from the shore to make them.”

Laurence would have given a great deal for a pair of boots. He contented himself, in the meantime, by working out a way of lacing the sandals more closely to his feet with the unraveled remnants of his woolen stockings, braided to make thin ropes. The coat he made into a bundle with his trousers: at least in the native clothing, he hoped he would not be utterly conspicuous at a glance, when he had tied a rag over his hair.

The bundle he left in the corner of the room when the servants came with the evening meal, and despite the reawakening of his sense of taste, he forced himself to eat even the fermented fish with its sour, vinegared rice; he could not anticipate another meal, any time soon. When it was cleared away, and the noises of the house began to die away along with the light filtering in through the rice-paper walls, Laurence debated with himself the merits of going after the sword. All practicality argued against it. He could not be sure the sword would yet be in Kaneko’s office, nor that the chamber would be unguarded; if he did retrieve it, the blade should then have to be concealed somehow, or draw unwanted attention. A sword wrapped in a bundle of clothing would be of little use if he were confronted unexpectedly by a few pursuers; and only if he were taken so might he hope to escape.

“Well,” Laurence said, standing, “I may as well have a look: if it does not come easy to hand, I may always withdraw.” He felt awkward, uneasy in the decision: irrational, when so many sensible arguments stood against it. He could not have said why; some inarticulate feeling only revolted. He did not want to leave the sword.

He mentally told himself to wake at four bells of the middle watch, and slept until the deep of the night, rousing from another strange and unpleasant dream: great chains tangled around his wrists, dragging him through deep water. He took his bundle, slung over a shoulder by his belt, and stepped cautiously out into the hallway: the soft matting did not betray him as he walked, barefoot to keep the slap of the sandals from making any noise.

The walls were a faint luminescent grey, paler than their frames. He kept the very tips of his fingers lightly against the surface of the paper, guiding his steps through the dark. There was a yellow glow of lantern-light somewhere on his right—outside the house, he thought; within, all the rooms were dark. He came to Kaneko’s office, and the door slid soundlessly open on its track. He thought at first he had mistaken the room: the desk was gone, and the room entirely bare at first glance. Then Laurence saw the furniture had all been tidied away against the walls, and the writing-desk stood atop a low chest.

He carefully lifted down the desk, and opening the lid found the blade wrapped in a soft silk cloth, which he left behind. He put the sword inside his bundle of clothing, pulling out folds to conceal it from hilt to tip, and restored the chest and desk to their places. He was comforted to have the sword again, and yet distressed for being so: too much as though he could not trust himself, his own feelings, to be as they ought.

Slipping back into the hallway, he looked for a way out, and followed a breath of air to the entryway: a very indifferent sentry drowsed in a corner, and Laurence was past him and had a foot in the gardens when a great roaring came from above, a sound at once familiar and bone-rattling, though he had not heard it since the battle of the Nile: a dragon, overhead, and the lights of all the house flared at his back.

“Buggering mad, the lot of you,” Mr. Ness had said, rudely, but Temeraire had with some exasperation demanded a better suggestion of him and, failing to receive any, had nodded firmly.

“Then we shall at least try,” he said, “and if it does not work, then I suppose you must begin to take out all that ballast and throw it into the ocean, along with the cannon, until we can lift the ship; and while you do that, Iskierka will go to the shore to be safe, and the other dragons will stay with her and the egg, and I will go and find Laurence. You will stay with the egg?” he appealed, turning his head.

“Of course we will,” Maximus said stoutly, and Lily added, “All of us: except Nitidus will go with you, to carry messages back and forth,” an excellent notion. Temeraire was quite sure no-one would give any trouble to Iskierka and Lily and Maximus.

“Anyway,” Lily said, “perhaps it needn’t come to that, and I am quite ready to be off these rocks: let us go by all means and fetch some trees.”

But they were unable to leave immediately: “I want to come, too!” Kulingile called down, in protest. Certainly Temeraire could not stay, but Maximus stood on seniority and refused to stay behind, either, which bode fair to make a quarrel; and meanwhile Hammond began bleating of the necessity to avoid being seen. Well, Temeraire did not mean to go in blowing on trumpets, but after all, they did need to take away several large trees, and he supposed someone might notice: that would not be his fault.

“We had better come along, then, Hammond; and all your crews, also,” Churki said.

Hammond, taken aback, said, “Certainly not—a martial presence, nothing more undesirable—”

But Churki shook her head censoriously at him. “If there are dragons here, they will certainly assume we are here to take their people away if they do not see we have any of our own. And if there are men, they will want men to talk to: that is only the natural order of things, and all the more so if they are like these peculiar sailors you have here on this vessel, who are afraid of dragons.”

Hammond paused, doubtful; Temeraire could see the sense in what Churki said, but he did not mean to countenance the delay involved in getting all the crews aboard. He only had a scant few officers himself, but Lily and her formation-dragons had their full crews, and even the aviators could not easily go clambering aboard from the precarious surface which the ship presently offered.

“The captains shall come with us,” Temeraire said, “and Ferris shall come with me, which will make a sensible number of men, and not any sort of threatening number; and,” to Kulingile, “this time Maximus shall go, and if we cannot get the boat off, then next time, you shall: that is surely only fair. And,” he added, very handsomely in his opinion, “I will take the lines when we come back to give you a rest before we lever her off, even though it will not be my turn yet.”

“I do not need a rest,” Kulingile said disconsolately. “This is not very difficult: it is only tiresome, and I want something better to eat, which you are sure to get when you are on land.”

“Oh!” Iskierka said, raising up her head from the dragondeck, where she had lain down again, ignoring Granby and Maximus’s surgeon Gaiters clambering about her hindquarters, consulting in low voices, “a cow! You shall bring me back a cow, Temeraire; do not forget it.”

“Wherever am I to find a cow, which is not someone’s property?” Temeraire said in exasperation, and Hammond at once began to speak again—likely the discussion should have been another hour, but Temeraire realized his mistake and said quickly, “but we will bring you both back something good to eat, if we should find anything without anyone seeing us, or objecting: we will save you the very best of what we find, you have my promise.”

“Well, that is fair,” Kulingile said, mollified, and Temeraire put out a foreleg on the dragondeck for Ferris, who hesitated only a moment before climbing into his grasp, and then launched them before anyone else could object further, or make any more unreasonable demands.

Ferris was very quiet, when he had got astride Temeraire’s neck and buckled himself on, while they hovered waiting for the other dragons to take up their captains and come aloft—Temeraire was careful to keep out of ear-shot of the deck. “Are you quite well, Ferris?” Temeraire said, craning about his head.