Crucible of Gold

Chapter 7

LAURENCE STIRRED AWAKE on Temeraire’s back early in the morning hours, half-aware of something altered: and when he raised his head he could see as a faint jagged line the great Andean peaks standing on the horizon, lit from behind by the sun.

They had hop-scotched from one small island to another across several hundred miles of ocean. Laurence and Hammond sat aloft, tied on to the links of Temeraire’s breastplate; a makeshift belly-netting of rope and tarpaulins slung below held the sailors, much to Temeraire’s displeasure. But Kulingile had flatly refused to carry anyone but Demane at all, and as Iskierka made an inconvenient transport she had only been allotted the other aviators, a smaller group.

“Are you awake, Laurence?” Temeraire asked, glancing back as he flew. “Those mountains are very far away; where do you suppose we ought to land? And do you think they will have anything to eat besides fish?”

The coastline coming visible before them was a stand of rough brown cliffs that so far as Laurence could see through his glass supported only a barren desert plain: save for one green slashing line away to the north. “That must be a river there, I imagine, coming down from the mountains,” he said, pointing Temeraire in its direction. “If nothing else we will be glad of fresh water.”

There was more to be found as they drew near: the river and ocean had together cut the cliffs down at their junction, and a large and prosperous fishing village had grown up around the river mouth where the access to the sea should be easiest. A great number of good-sized houses, thatched roofs high and deeply sloped, and even one larger structure of smooth stone; there were broad and stone-paved streets quiet even at daybreak but for the pale dots of cream and brown: grazing sheep, wandering freely.

“I hope the Inca will be gracious hosts,” Temeraire said, looking on these last with an acquisitive eye as he swiftly beat on towards the coast.

“Pray remember, Captain—Temeraire,” Hammond said anxiously, “Pizarro and his adventurers landed on this same coast, perhaps even in this very settlement—they, too, called themselves an embassy and accepted local hospitality, and then, of course—in short, we must remember we are not come to a virgin land, but one with cause for the deepest suspicion—we must exercise the greatest caution—”

Laurence had only the vaguest notion of the history of the conquistadors, a dredging from schoolroom days, but the story of Pizarro’s gruesome end had been a favorite of the tutors whose task it had been to keep several young boys occupied, particularly when approved of as a morality tale by their father. “I trust, sir,” he said dryly, “that though we are not a pretty crew, we will prove able to restrain ourselves from rapine and pillage; and I will go so far as to assure you of our not abducting and murdering the present Inca chieftain, should we encounter that person.”

“I beg you will not joke upon the matter,” Hammond said, without any marked decrease in anxiety. “If the Inca are indeed prepared to entertain negotiations—exchange ambassadors—if they are now at last willing to be persuadable, and the French have already made inroads—”

Hammond did not need to expound too greatly on this theme. Pizarro had correctly realized that he had discovered a great empire; he had written accurate and detailed reports of the excellent roads, the wealth in gold and silver, the full granaries; he had recognized without any subsequent contradiction the value of the territory which he had found. His only error had been to mistake the abundant dragons for feral creatures, spread wide for lack of guns—an error disabused with marked speed and ferocity when his last act of murder removed the one hostage whose safety had stayed their retribution.

But his error had been only in favor of the Incan empire’s might, and since then some two hundred years had surely brought advances to their army and their nation; there was no question that a French alliance with them could alter the course of the war.

“As little as I like to countenance any delay in our mission to Brazil,” Hammond said, “I cannot call it anything but Providential that we should have the opportunity to intervene in such a negotiation, which but for the greatest good fortune we should have known nothing of, and been unable to answer.”

Laurence could not call it greatest good fortune to have lost the Allegiance, or to be made prisoner and marooned; but he had no argument with Hammond’s conclusion: that they ought make every effort to put Britain on friendly terms with the Inca, even at the cost of delay. Yet without disagreement on this point, Laurence nevertheless could not care for Hammond’s hinted suggestions of a covert approach.

“We will not avert suspicion by creeping past their coast stealthily and falling upon their water or taking their game without invitation,” Laurence said. “And both we must have imminently; I must think it better to ask first, and hope we are met hospitably.”

“As much as one can call it asking, when we appear with three dragons in tow,” Hammond said, dismally.

But there was no alternative. The pirates’ map had not led them astray, but many of the islands marked upon it had scarcely deserved the name, and certainly could offer no safe harbor. The two weeks of their journey leaping from one to another, with only a few string bags of cocoanuts and salt pork for refreshment, had not left them in a condition to recommend themselves as guests, even while increasing their urgency to do so. Unshaven faces dirty and sunken-cheeked, ragged clothing and cracked boots: they looked very beggars, and were suitably perishing of hunger and thirst to match that state.

“I do not mean to steal anything, and I will just say a word in Kulingile’s ear, and Iskierka’s, so they shan’t, either,” Temeraire said. “But those sheep do look so very nice and fat: surely they can spare us one or two; or three, even. We might put that wall back up for them, that has fallen into the ocean, if they liked to be repaid; or perhaps if we should begin by doing it, they would feel grateful and inclined to be courteous.”

Laurence examined the damage from aloft: a retaining wall around the grounds of the great stone structure, a low pyramid of broad stepped levels, and a portion of it had tumbled over as a single block now lying in the surf being battened on by the waves. “Where? Oh; yes, I see it—no, that is a house—” Hammond said, peering through the glass futilely, until he surrendered it again to Laurence. “It cannot but help to have some way to reconcile them to our arrival, I suppose—”

They signaled Iskierka and Kulingile on to a landing place a little south of the village, to avoid coming upon them in force, and Temeraire flew on. “Can you land on their beach, without disturbing those boats?” Laurence asked Temeraire, as they drew near: these were a handful of small craft drawn far up on the sand; Laurence wondered if perhaps a greater part of the village’s fleet might already be out to sea.

“That would be a piece of good luck,” Temeraire said, “if it means fewer men about whom we must persuade we are friendly, and not like those conquistadors; I will set down very carefully.” He did manage to alight without causing harm to anything more than one large raft, which lying at an angle caught the draught of his wings and was lifted halfway into the water: but Temeraire hastily snagged it with one talon and drew it back up the sand without worse than a few gouges in the wood.

But no-one at all came down to the sand to greet them, nor even issued cries of alarm; at least none that could be heard over the sailors calling up, asking to be let loose from the nets. “Quiet there: I would as soon set loose a pack of wolves, before we have been made welcome,” Laurence said. “If there is any man among you who is not afraid to come with us to make our introductions, he may come out: the rest of you must wait.”

He untied the rope from Temeraire’s breastplate and threw it out over the side; with one hand for the rope and another for Hammond’s elbow, he climbed down.

“I’ll go, sir,” Baggy called out, in his wavering half-broken voice; Laurence took out Mayhew as well, ignoring that fellow’s faint dissatisfied murmur, which did not quite reach a volume requiring acknowledgment: Laurence was determined to promote him, if he could, and regardless if Mayhew did not like it; a few more men volunteered themselves from curiosity, or a desire to stretch their legs.

“I do not see that I ought to only sit here while you go,” Temeraire said, disconsolate. “After all, I speak more Quechua than do you, or anyone but Hammond; and my accent is better than Hammond’s, too. Oh; with no offense meant.”

As Temeraire was larger than any of the village houses, save the one ceremonial building on the hill, and the street would not have allowed his passage, Laurence could not endorse his attempting to come with them. “They can hardly miss seeing you from the village in any case,” he said, “and your presence here must induce them to caution: I do not think we can be walking into danger.”

“There is something wrong with my accent?” Hammond said, under his breath, as they left.

They scarcely seemed to be walking into any human habitation at all: they climbed the low sandy hill into the village, with Temeraire looming behind them on the shore, and came to the first houses without any sign of life. “Halloa,” Laurence called, without answer, except one fat waddling creature which looked a cross between a lap-dog and a rat, which put its nose out of doors and came towards them with every overture of friendliness.

“A guinea pig, I believe,” Hammond said, picking the animal up: it offered no resistance but snuffled at him curiously.

“Looks like good eating, that,” Baggy said, making the creature the recipient of ever-as-longing a look as Temeraire had cast upon the sheep. “Which is to say, if they was to offer us some, I wouldn’t say no,” he added hastily.

“Can they all have decamped so quickly, without our seeing them?” Hammond said. “Perhaps we were seen on our approach—our lanterns?”

“No,” Laurence said: there was no smoke of cooking-fires, and weeds grew thick in the street. “There is no-one here.”

“I can scarcely credit that so prosperous a settlement should have been abandoned,” Hammond protested. “Their herds—the boats on the shore—”

Laurence stepped to the doorway of the hut where the guinea pig had come, and looked inside: a few low pallets on the floor, empty, covered with blankets; some clay pots for cookery; a jug smelling pungently of liquor, when he bent over it. All the gently disordered air of a house lived-in, or only temporarily abandoned. Outside, on a wooden rack, ears of maize tied together by the papery husks were drying in the sun; picked at by birds, but far from stripped-clean.

They climbed up the road to the stepped pyramid: the earth around it had been turned a great deal on both sides of the pathway, and the mounds of dirt not covered over or laid smooth; only a few weeds had sprung up on most. The opening of the pyramid was a black empty mouth, waiting; Laurence stepped just inside, out of the sunlight, and waited for his eyes to adjust to the dark.

And then stepped back, quickly, putting his cloak over his mouth. “Back to the shore,” he said. “Put that animal down, Hammond; back to Temeraire, at once, and do not step off the path, or go into the houses.”

“What?” Hammond said, even as the sailors began to back away. “What is it, Captain?”

“Plague,” Laurence said. “Plague; and all of them are dead.”

Temeraire was sorry for the people, of course, but as after all they had no more use for the sheep—which were not sheep, but another animal entirely, larger, with a long neck and meat not unlike venison, which Hammond called a llama—he did not scruple to enjoy them tremendously. Fish was very well and good, but one grew tired of it unendingly, especially when there was no chance of preparing it differently, either, and the sea-lions they had taken on that last island but one were not really a sufficient change.

“You might try stewing a few of them for tomorrow,” he said to Gong Su, gnawing clean a final bone, “and I would not mind some of that maize, either, did you call it, Mr. Hammond? It has a pleasant smell,” emanating from the fire where a great many ears were presently being roasted for the men to eat along with a round dozen of the guinea pigs.

There were also potatoes—very peculiar in color, a lurid purple—which had come out of a great storehouse at the edge of the town. There were many other things in it also besides food: woven blankets, sandals, even several bronze tools whose purpose they could not make out: a long wooden handle with a blade set into it at the end, but it did not seem to be a weapon. “Something to do with farming, I suppose,” Granby said, turning it over in his hands.

The bulk of the stores however were fish: dried fish, salted fish, fish, fish, fish. And there were not very many of the llamas at all left, when one considered them with an eye towards extended supply. “We had better start looking for some other town,” Iskierka said, when they had done eating and looked over the remaining herd. “Those will not last for long, and I am d—d if I will eat more fish.”

The men were very eager to be gone themselves, as soon as any other place could be found. “You had all three better go,” Granby said. “I make no odds of anyone coming to a plague-ridden town, and if there is anyone left to object to our making free of their goods, there cannot be so many of them, anyway; we will do perfectly well, and you should meet the local beasts in force if there are any.”

“I am not leaving Demane here with the sailors,” Kulingile said, flatly.

“I will go hunting,” Demane said, “and you will go find us somewhere to stay; I am not a child who needs to be always watched.”

He stalked off; Temeraire thought it was rather hard on Kulingile, who drooped unhappily, but there was a great deal of sense in what Granby said. “And you would not want to bring Demane along the very first time to meet strange dragons, anyway,” he said to Kulingile, which he meant as consolation, even though privately Temeraire would have preferred to keep Laurence with him also: he could not help but recall that in Africa he had also thought Laurence would be safe, and returned after only a day’s flight to Capetown and found him snatched away by the Tswana.

“We will not go very far, either,” he added.

There was at least no need to range widely over the ground: there was the river, and to either side of it a narrow green wilderness, and beyond that only a broad dusty desert; they needed only follow the course of the water. They did once come across what Temeraire decided on consideration was a road: the footpath itself was difficult to make out, certainly not intended for use by dragons, but it was marked very regularly with trees which could not have lined up in such a way by nature. It cut the river and continued on both north and south, which provoked some debate: Iskierka was for turning aside to follow it.

“It is built by people,” Iskierka said, “so that must mean they go along that way, and where we find them, we will very likely find more llamas, and perhaps some other beasts.”

“If they are travelers, they might go a very long distance without having any animals besides a horse, or something else to ride and not to eat,” Temeraire said. “I cannot call it a good notion to go off into the desert when we do not want to be gone long. It is much more likely that we will find some people living along this river, if we only keep to it.”

“But if they live along the river, they likely eat fish,” Iskierka said, grumbling.

The expanse of green around the river broadened as they continued in the upstream direction. Kulingile was watching the progress of the sun by looking at the shadow of his wing, and wanting only to go back; but when Temeraire out of pity proposed his doing so early, Kulingile said low, “No; if I went back without you, Demane should know I had come to look for him; he does not want me back sooner.”

“Well,” Temeraire said, sorry, “we had better divide up and go separately, to cover more ground; then we can find something and all go back together, quickly.” Kulingile brightened, and Iskierka was nothing loath, either; they agreed to find one another in an hour, and parted.

The hour was nearly spent before Temeraire gave up and turned back towards the river, for their rendezvous, and then stumbled quite by accident upon a sort of construction—an aqueduct carrying water northward, away from the river, and while he did not know its purpose it was plainly built deliberately, so he turned to follow its course and came with only a few minutes’ flying out upon a broad field. In it a small dragon in green and yellow plumes was hard at work, dragging an odd contraption behind himself through the dirt.

The device, Temeraire thought, was made of six of the strange bronze implements they had seen, which had been somewhat clumsily yoked together; they were slung with ropes over the dragon’s shoulders. A few men and women followed the dragon through the field, turning over the dirt that the blades had cut apart.

Temeraire paused hovering over the trees, but they did not look up, all of them too fixed and intent upon the earth beneath them instead, so he landed to introduce himself; and as he came down the small green dragon looked up, saw him, shrilled in tones of horror, and flung the entire bronze plow at his head.

“Ow!” Temeraire said, wincing away as the clanging mess struck against his breast and head. “You are not an eighth my size; whatever do you mean by—” but the dragon was not even waiting; it had seized up the handful of people in its talons and was tearing away into the air.

“Oh!” Temeraire said, outraged, and roared after him; the strange dragon only put on yet more speed, until he pulled up short mid-air just as suddenly, as Kulingile, lit golden by the sun, came flying over the tree-tops.

“I thought you were maybe Supay, or one of his servants,” the small dragon, whose name was Palta, said absently, his impressed gaze still fixed upon Kulingile. But who Supay was, Temeraire did not know, and by Supay the dragon seemed to mean some sort of creature from under ground.

“I do not see how you can have thought any such thing,” Temeraire said. “It sounds as though you had mistaken me for a bunyip or something like it, instead of a dragon, which is perfectly ridiculous.”

“I do not mean to be rude,” the little dragon said, ruffling his feathers up so that he looked nearly twice his size, “but you are all black and shriveled, as though you had been burned up, so I do not think it is as ridiculous as that.”

That was rude, in Temeraire’s opinion, and he was about to say so when Iskierka landed. “What are you all sitting about here for? Have you found another town yet?” she said, and peered critically at Palta. “Is there anything more to eat near-by?” she demanded.

He did not understand her, of course, but Palta shrank back anyway from her outthrust head, wreathed in steam. “My fishermen have just had a very good catch of—” Palta began timidly when Temeraire asked.

“Whatever good is he, then?” Iskierka said impatiently. “Come along back to the camp, and we will find out more from this fellow instead.”

“What fellow?” Temeraire said, and then discovered that Iskierka was carrying a man, whom she had evidently snatched up from somewhere: an old man, with very white hair and his skin deeply furrowed and brown with sun, and marks all over his face; and she had not even asked him if he minded.

“How could I have asked him when I do not speak the language?” she said, dismissing Temeraire’s protests. He was quite sure that she had ought to have asked, and better still not taken him at all. “It is not as though I meant him any harm. We will ask him where we can find some better food, and then I will take him back where I found him—oh, somewhere back that way.”

“I am sure she doesn’t know in the least where she found him,” Temeraire said under his breath, and then asked Palta. “I don’t suppose you know him?”

“No, he is not mine; and you mayn’t have any of mine, either,” Palta said, putting himself anxiously between them and his small group of wide-eyed people. “If you try—”

“Pray stop that; whyever would we take them?” Temeraire said. “We are not trying to take you prisoner; we only want to know where we are, and how we can get to Brazil: we are not thieves.” He paused, realizing Iskierka had already given him the lie. “Well; except Iskierka, but—you see—she does mean to take this gentleman back home, when we have asked him some questions,” he finished uncomfortably.

Palta, unconvinced, was only persuaded to accompany them back to the shore when Temeraire acceded to his demand that he should be allowed to send his handful of companions back to their home, first. Even so, he tried to keep himself in front while they left, as though he could stop Temeraire seeing which way they were going into the trees; and further insisted on waiting afterwards for a while also, until the sounds of their passage had entirely faded. He then wanted all four of them to go flying abreast and together, even though that was not convenient when Kulingile was slower than all of them, and Temeraire might have gone ahead.

The sailors had put up a makeshift camp with the goods out of the storehouse: several lean-tos and tents, farther up the river away from the village, and several cooking-fires, Temeraire was glad to see; the men were even singing a round of “Spanish Ladies” as they came in for a landing.

“Oh,” Palta said, staring around the camp. “Oh; so many! Are they all yours?”

He was asking Kulingile, even though Kulingile did not understand him and could not say a word back. Temeraire snorted. “They are ours,” he said, “although not properly the sailors: they are only along because we would not leave them to drown, and ought to be more grateful for it than they are. Laurence,” he said, turning, “this is Palta, and that man is called Taruca: Iskierka snatched him, and I cannot find she asked him in the least.”

They had made their camp upriver at a distance, but the temple on its hill threw a long shadow. The men went about with low voices, and did not even try to steal away to the village for looting, and Laurence did not say, even in a breath to Granby, what else he had seen inside the charnel-house pyramid: the sheets of beaten gold upon the walls, and the vessels of silver standing amid the silent decaying pallets of the dead.

The storehouse at least had offered a more modest scope for greed, and Laurence did not hesitate to order Forthing to share out the jars of local beer they found within: better the men should be drowsy and pacified than tempted to go prying about; he had no illusions about the sensible restraint any man of them was likely to exercise in the face of treasure on such a scale.

The dragons were not gone long, fortunately; although they brought with them fresh cause for dismay in the person of Taruca, and Iskierka was at once unrepentant and unable to say just where she had snatched him.

“He was alone, anyway,” she said, “only sitting in the sun near an old empty house, and he did not even try to run away when I landed and picked him up.”

“Oh, Lord,” Granby said despairingly. “Of course he didn’t, you lunatic beast: he is stone blind.”

Taruca’s face was marred with pockmarks, most nearly about his ruined eyes, but he seemed resigned more than alarmed by his abduction. At least, he was ready to accept their apologies and also a share in their dinner and a cup of the pilfered beer. “I thank you; that is refreshing,” he said politely, without mentioning as well he might have that they were serving him from the stores of his own people. “But I am hearing the ocean: is this not Quitalén village? We must not linger here: the governors have banned men from the place while the unhealthy air remains.”

“If I am understanding correctly,” Hammond added to his translation, “the plague passed over not three months ago; and the—red fever?—a month later, which he says was worse.”

“The measles?” Ferris suggested.

“Measles would scarcely be worse than plague,” Granby said. “But there must be unhealthy air here; whoever heard of measles and plague, so close on one another; and smallpox, too, if this fellow’s face is anything to go by. Pray ask him where we can take him home to?”

Hammond’s imperfect knowledge of the language evidently gave him some difficulties in this communication: Taruca seemed perplexed by the question, and after listening in, the dragon Palta looked sidelong up towards Temeraire in a cautious way and volunteered, “If you do not want him, I would be very happy to take him myself: he could help attend the dead, and light work such as that only; I assure you we would be very kind to him.”

“We did not take him to make him a servant, to strangers,” Laurence said when this was translated for him. “Mr. Hammond, pray assure him we will certainly try and find his people, if we can; at least Iskierka can give us the general direction. And if we do not succeed—” He stopped: he had not the least idea what they should do with the old man; they could scarcely leave him alone to his fate, but to take him along away from his home and all his native society seemed not much less cruel. “Ask him what he should like for us to do,” he finished, lamely.

When at last the offer was conveyed and understood Taruca said, doubtfully, “Would you—you would take me home, to my children? They are in the ayllu of Curicuillor, at Titicaca—you will take me back to them?”

“I am afraid the precise meaning of the word is beyond me,” Hammond added, to his translation. “I understood it to mean family, but that does not seem to be quite correct under the circumstances.”

“In any case, tell him we will do so gladly,” Laurence said, “if he can direct us; where is it?”

“Lake Titicaca; that is in the highlands near Cusco,” the dragon Palta said, “and nearly two-weeks’ flying in bad air; really you had better leave him with me, as you don’t want him yourselves.”

“Two weeks’ flying?” Granby said, dismayed, when Temeraire had translated. “I suppose I ought to have expected you to have seized upon a fellow whose nearest relations are on the other side of the country,” he added to Iskierka, “but what is he doing here, then?” and meanwhile Hammond, as always fixed without any evidence of mercy upon his ultimate purpose, raised immediate and urgent objection.

“We cannot simply go flying about the countryside without permission, at such a distance,” he said. “Even if such an incursion were not to provoke a hostile answer—which, Captain,” he added, “should scarcely permit us to be of any use to the poor fellow in any case—”

“You need not study to persuade me, Mr. Hammond; I agree we must first present ourselves, even as we are, to some nearer authority,” Laurence said. “That, therefore, must be our next concern; afterwards—”

“Perhaps we may find some local traveling in that direction, who might take the gentleman with him,” Hammond said, an optimism not much supported by the distances involved. Laurence was sure that unless such a lucky chance befell, Hammond would soon be arguing for pursuing the mission instead: and he was forced to admit such an argument would be cogent indeed, considering the loss of time a side journey of that distance would involve.

“Anyway,” Temeraire said, turning his head to them after interrogating the little dragon further, “we may ask the governor what to do: Palta says his name is Hualpa Uturuncu, and he lives in a city called Talcahuano.”

Chapter 8

“THE DISTANCE IS OF NO GREAT MOMENT,” Governor Hualpa said, when Temeraire had explained their difficulty. “The theft, however, most certainly is.”

They were all of them inside the ceremonial hall of the city, a splendid building many times the size of the pyramid which they had seen on the shore, although in the same style, with enormously broad stepped platforms made of great blocks of stone so snugly fitted one could only see the separations by looking very closely indeed. And inside, oh, inside! The walls were entirely covered with sheets of gold beaten thin and elaborately engraved, lit by many lamps and by windows cut in the roof, which allowed in great shafts of illumination when the sun was high enough.

One of the sailors had gone over to the wall and rubbed it, before being sharply called back to his place by Forthing: Temeraire had overheard him say, “Real enough gold, it is,” in a low voice to his fellows, so it was not merely brass—even though brass would have been almost equally marvelous; Temeraire would not have argued with anyone who had proposed to offer him such panels made of brass, for his pavilion.

The setting made it only the more distressing to find themselves so unkempt and ragged. Laurence had held them back a day to scrub clean in the river and mend their clothes as best they could before entering the city and presenting themselves to Hualpa, but there was only so much one could do with cold water and a few bent needles. Temeraire had tried to persuade Laurence to wear his robes for the meeting, as Emily had those safe preserved, but without success; and no-one else had anything but what they wore.

He could understand, of course, Laurence’s wish to share in the general privation, but when Temeraire had ducked his head under the lintel of the massive doorway and come inside, and his eyes had adjusted to the grandeur before him, he had regretted it all over again, and still more when the governor had come out to meet them: Hualpa was not so long as Temeraire himself, but not very much shorter, either, and his feathered scales ruffled up so wide about his neck and shoulders that he seemed somehow larger than he was.

In any case, his ornaments of office would have lent even a lesser beast enormous gravity: a band of gold was wrapped about the top of his throat, set into a woolen collar with a tasseled fringe in a bright green color which stood markedly against the deep intense violet of his scales, and enormous gold circles had been embedded within his ears, so they hung to the bottom of his jaw. Golden hoops pierced the lower edges of his wings, a form of decoration Temeraire had never seen before: remarkably handsome, he thought.

“Consideration must be given to strangers and guests who are unfamiliar with local custom,” Hualpa continued, “but this is strange indeed: do you expect me to approve your behavior?”

He sat back on his haunches, the golden hoops ringing against the stone floor as he swept his wings down and onto his back in an elaborate movement: the emeralds caught the shafts of sunlight piercing the great room and flared brilliant green for a moment. “It is known that men from the sea are inveterate liars and thieves,” he added censoriously, “and although I have heard arguments that this is from their being men of no ayllu, here you are all together, and brazenly you present yourselves in the court without even an attempt to conceal your crime.”

“But the people were all dead,” Temeraire protested. “The llamas were only wandering around perfectly loose—”

“Not of the llamas,” Hualpa said, “of course you are welcome to the llamas, if no-one was herding them, and you were hungry: of the man.”

“I had not understood they practiced slavery, in this country,” Hammond said to Laurence rather anxiously, after Temeraire had translated his exchange, “but if it is the custom—if it is their law—”

Hammond might well express such anxiety, Laurence thought grimly: he could hardly name anything he would less desire than to hand a man over into bondage: whether owned by another man or a dragon scarcely made any difference. The great distance between Taruca’s home—whence he had surely been taken unwillingly—and his present abode was now explained, and his resignation at the fresh abduction. A man once snatched into slavery might be indifferent to a change of master, and would scarcely see any reason to believe that any honest or merciful act should be the design of his new captors.

“Pray inquire of the gentleman,” Laurence said, cutting Hammond’s continuing murmur short, “why he was taken from his home: had he committed a crime?”

“I must remind you, Captain, that we cannot intrude our own judgment upon their practice in such matters—” Hammond halted, seeing Laurence’s face, and turned to speak to Taruca, whose indignation when he had made out the line of Hammond’s inquiry required no translation.

“What reason but that I had strayed too far, walking, from the protection of my own ayllu, and might be seized without retribution: indeed, why would anyone have wanted to, if I were a criminal and a thief?” Taruca said, and hesitated; then drew himself up proudly and added, “If more reason were needed, I am of the khipukamayuq, and have fathered three sons and seven daughters yet alive when last I saw them: and beside that I am marked, of course, which you do not need me to say.”

Finishing this speech, his shoulders bowed as he said almost privately to himself, “Of course you do not mean to take me back,” with a faded resignation. Laurence would have liked to reassure him more decidedly than he could, in the present circumstance.

Meanwhile the listening governor bent down and peered at Taruca with one slitted red eye. “Is he marked?” He lifted his head away again and shook it, setting the rings of his peculiar accoutrement jingling, and said to Temeraire. “So he has survived the pox? The matter grows even worse. You are sea-people: you have no khipu yourself for him to work with, and no other tasks suitable for a man of his years: what would you even do with him? And from what you say, you did not even offer a proper challenge.”

“But we could not have made a challenge, even if we had wanted to,” Temeraire said, “as I have explained Iskierka did not mark where Taruca was taken from very well: she did not know he was blind, and would not be able to tell us the way back. Anyway, we mean to take him back to his children, not to keep him to do work for us: and I think it is very unkind that he should have been taken away from them. If you mean to reproach us for taking him from his owner, that is scarcely worse than taking him from his family—”

Even before Temeraire had translated his own speech, Laurence had gathered its direction by the increasingly broad gestures of protest Hammond made, trying to catch his attention; at last Laurence laid a hand on Temeraire’s side to interrupt him, and received an account of the conversation.

“You cannot so address the representative of a nation!” Hammond said, sharply. “Sir,” he said, turning his head up towards the governor and shouting, “sir, I must inform you that this in no way represents the position of His Majesty—”

Governor Hualpa, who so far had taken no particular notice of the human members of their party, lowered his head to put that enormous red eye on Hammond, whose speech faltered a little, meeting it. “Why are you shouting at me?” Hualpa said. “The governor of men will not receive you, because your country-men have proven they are not to be trusted, and you would very likely try to take him prisoner for gold; you have no-one else to blame for that but yourselves. Are you trying to say that this dragon has no standing to speak for your party?”

This inquiry left Hammond agape and plainly reluctant to effectually supplant himself with Temeraire, as representative of their party. Yet if there were to be any hope of persuading the governor to permit Taruca to go free, without provoking grievous incident, some avenue of communication at least was necessary to them; Laurence took Hammond by the arm.

“You have yourself expressed confusion as to the means the French had found to open negotiations,” Laurence said to him. “If the Inca will receive a dragon as ambassador, when they will not any man, the mystery is explained: you must not disavow Temeraire’s authority, if you desire any chance of forming relations with them ourselves.”

“Yes—yes, of course,” Hammond said, reluctantly dragging, and at last conveyed the same to Hualpa, not without doing his best to extract from Laurence a commitment to make Temeraire say only what Hammond first approved.

“You know my own sentiments on this matter,” Laurence said, while Hammond spoke to Hualpa, “and I am sorry—very sorry indeed—to learn that slavery is practiced here; but in justice to Hammond, we cannot hope to effect any change in their society, if we begin with antagonism; and indeed we are in poor circumstances to do so when our own nation can be reproached with its own share of barbarism in this regard.”

“Well, of course I will be polite,” Temeraire answered him, “but I must say it is rather much to be called thieves, only because we do not go about keeping slaves, and chaining them up, and selling them away from their families. It seems to me that it is only a compliment to them that I believed they were not slavers, either, and not an insult—”

“Not an insult!” another voice said, behind them, when Temeraire had turned to mention this to Hualpa; Temeraire looked over his shoulder to see that another dragon had come pacing into the hall: only a little larger than Palta had been, and in plumage entirely of green, “not an insult, when you talk as though I had treated him like a llama—chaining! selling! oh!”

The newcomer, a dragon called Cuarla, having bobbed his head to Governor Hualpa, proceeded to identify himself as Taruca’s injured owner. “And it is not to be borne,” he added, “that this burned dragon should be allowed to take him away: I am sure he would chain him up.”

“I would not chain anyone!” Temeraire said, “and I did not take him, anyway: Iskierka did.”

“What are you saying about me?” Iskierka demanded, rousing from her rapt contemplation of the wall; she had grown weary of the conversation, which she could not understand, and wandered off across the floor to go stare upon the panels. Several of the sailors were creeping along on her flanks and trying to use her to hide their attempts to break off small pieces; Ferris had every few minutes to go and chivvy several of them back into place.

“Nothing that is not the truth,” Temeraire said, “so you may lump it; you did take Taruca, and this dragon is here to complain of you and make trouble for all of us because you did.”

Iskierka looked Cuarla up and down and snorted comprehensively. “That little creature may complain of me all day if he likes; what does he mean to do about it?”

“Good God,” Hammond said. “Temeraire, do not—”

“Of course I will not translate that,” Temeraire said, with a flip of his ruff; he was not stupid, although he had to admit that Iskierka’s remark, however unkind, was rather to the point. The snort, however, did not require any translation: even without an intelligible word said to him, Cuarla puffed all his scales out so as to make himself nearly twice his size—which still left him somewhat less than a quarter of Iskierka’s.

“I will not have it,” he said furiously, “I will not! I demand a challenge, if she will not give him back; and apologize; and give me one of her men, too; she ought not have so many if it only makes her greedy for more.” And he glared at Iskierka with slitted fury.

Temeraire regarded him in some perplexity: surely he could not be a sensible creature. “He wants to fight you,” Temeraire said, to Iskierka’s demands for more translation. “No, I am not mistaken; and no, he does not think it is some other dragon he must fight; you can see perfectly well he is staring right at you, even if you do not know his language.”

“Perhaps,” Hammond said anxiously, “perhaps we might reconsider—Captain Laurence, it seems to me—the dragon seems very attached, and not at all likely to have mistreated—”

Overhearing, Iskierka swung her head around, outraged. “I am not going to lose to him.”

“It can scarcely forward our cause for you to maim or perhaps even kill a native beast, after you have already begun by stealing one of his—” Hammond paused, and groped around for a word which should sound nicer than slave, Temeraire supposed.

“Enough,” Laurence said, finally, while Granby spoke urgently to Iskierka, who huffed a little steam but subsided. “Temeraire,” Laurence said, “pray convey to these—gentlemen—that we cannot see our way clear to handing over Taruca at present, as he does not wish it, but there can be no question of a battle: the governor at least, I hope, will not imagine that Cuarla has any chance of success, nor promote such an unequal contest.”

But when Temeraire had tried to explain, Hualpa shook his head, the gold ringing like bells. “Of course Cuarla is not going to fight her in his person,” he said. “What use would laws be, if that were the only recourse? We might as well be living without any civilization at all. No: if you refuse to return the man, and make acceptable restitution—”

“Well, we certainly are not going to give him any of our crew, only because we made a mistake; that is just nonsense,” Temeraire put in; he did not feel any need to discuss that with Hammond, as it went nearly without saying.

“—then she must fight the representative of the state,” Hualpa said, “and not merely the dragon she has injured.”

“Oh,” Temeraire said.

“I am sure I do not care in the least,” Iskierka said. “I will fight anyone he likes; and it will serve them right.”

That Iskierka was willing at any time to enter herself into a contest of violence was undisputed; but Laurence was no happier than Hammond to find them engaged in such an enterprise: aside from all the risks of failure, the risks of success were nearly as great, in its likelihood of provoking resentment and hostility.

“Sir,” he said to Taruca, having recruited Temeraire to translate for him, “I must beg you to take no offense; but if Iskierka is to hazard her life for your freedom, I will know, first, that there is no better alternative than this challenge.”

When Temeraire had explained, Taruca said, “What better alternative can there be? It is not Cuarla’s fault, poor creature; he did not take me from hiding. He exchanged a young man to my last ayllu for me: I had no kin there, either, and the boy wished to marry one of the young women, so I said I would come. So now of course Cuarla has the right to a battle.”

“Temeraire, you are certain he says he went to Cuarla by choice?” Laurence said, baffled. “Is it not his contention he was seized illegally?”

“I was, but that was many ayllu ago,” Taruca said, quite evidently seeing no contradiction between his right to liberty and Cuarla’s right to satisfaction, and puzzled that Laurence should even ask. “And you are not of my ayllu; you have no standing to demand that the champion of the state should fight for you.”

“Have you no right to appeal to the governor yourself?” Laurence asked.

“He is a dragon,” Taruca said with even more confusion.

“Then to—the governor of men?” Laurence said, a vague guess, and Taruca in some frustration raised his hands and let them drop again.

“What would I ask the governor? I have no complaint to make of Cuarla, to seek a different ayllu near-by, and I cannot live without any at all: I am blind, and I am too old. Besides, I was first taken in Collasuyo, a different province and a long way from here; even if I were a young man, chances are I would be snatched if I tried to walk the roads all that way alone.

“Why did you take me, and why did you say you would take me to my home, if you were not willing to give challenge? I am an old man to have my hopes raised so. At least when I asked Cuarla, and he refused, I understood: it is not in the natural order of things that a little dragon with a small ayllu should give me up. But you pressed me and I thought: you have three mighty dragons, and I can hear that your ayllu is large and full of young men; perhaps you could truly mean to be so generous. But it seems you only took me from my ayllu without any understanding of the law.”

Laurence was silenced; he could not dispute the justice of Taruca’s charge. And if they had not meant to keep him a servant, that was little excuse; Iskierka had still taken him for their own selfish benefit; and Laurence had no confidence that Taruca would not face reprisal from his owner, however previously mild, now that he had been so vocal about his desire to be elsewhere.

“Temeraire,” he said finally, “pray tell the governor that intending no offense, we are sorry to have nevertheless given it; and that honor demands we see Taruca to his home. If by this challenge we can secure his liberty without further injuring relations between our nations, we will venture it, so long as Iskierka is willing.”

“I might as easily fight, instead,” Temeraire said, belatedly regretting having been quite so forceful about Iskierka’s responsibility, when Hualpa explained that she must be properly attired to enter the arena, and some twelve young women he called mamaconas came out of a storeroom of the hall carrying together a golden neck-collar very like the one Hualpa wore, with the fringe splendidly woven of black wool. “After all, we are all of one party.”

“As she is the offender, she must face the trial,” Hualpa said. “Come: you may sit on her side of the court.”

Temeraire sighed. “Yes, that is for you,” he said, as the mamaconas brought the collar to Iskierka, who was eyeing it with wretchedly undisguised greed; she did not need to advertise their nearly destitute state. “And Laurence, the rest of us must go outside to the courtyard.”

Which was if anything more magnificent than the hall itself: open to the sky and with two fountains at either end, and the dragon Iskierka was to fight at the other side, sunning himself on the hard stone: a sleek creature with long silver scales tipped with green, and enormously long black fangs overhanging his lower jaw.

“What dragon is that?” Granby asked, from Temeraire’s back, where he had climbed up with Laurence to be carried to the stands. Temeraire regretfully recalled when that was Granby’s proper place, and none other; that now Forthing occupied that position was too distressful to contemplate long: as though Temeraire had come very low in the world, from those first days.

“His name is Manca Copacati,” Temeraire said, having consulted Hualpa, and settling himself upon one of the stepped platforms of the temple wall overlooking the long end of the court.

“Copacati?” Granby said. “The venom-spitters?”

Across the court, the silver dragon yawned enormously and shaking his head spat once on the ground in the manner of an old sailor clearing his throat: a thin greenish kind of ichor, which put up small trailers of steam in the sunlight.

Iskierka, who had come out of a passageway yielding onto the other side—and in Temeraire’s opinion doing nothing short of prancing—looked up at them over her shoulder and called, “Oh! A real fight: Granby, are you watching? Is your view all it ought to be? You might turn a little, Temeraire, so Granby can better see me win.”

“Damn her posturing; have they a surgeon, at least?” Granby said.

“I am sure I would win, too,” Temeraire said, under his breath: and to sharpen his regret, the battle would not have been brawling at all, but for an excellent cause, which Laurence approved.

“I would, too,” Kulingile said to Demane, anxiously. “I am much bigger than that dragon.”

“Cui?” Hualpa said, gesturing, and some young men came dragging a cart laden with hot baskets of delicious-smelling things: guinea pigs, skinned, stuffed with a sort of nutty bean, and roasted: and the baskets themselves made of maize husks, so one might pick them up and eat the entire thing at once. Temeraire ate five for consolation.

Granby, meanwhile, drank as many cups of the cloudy beer. Laurence could hardly chide him under the circumstances: an interminable wait while a crowd of spectators assembled with the air of coming to see an entertainment, and at the other end of the court the Copacati amusing himself by loudly recounting stories of his former victories to his acquaintance sitting by his end of the courtyard. Iskierka demanded translations of these, which Temeraire grudgingly provided; they made a narrative of maiming and destruction which even if exaggerated tenfold would have remained upsetting.

Seeing Granby’s distress, Hualpa said something to Temeraire which made his ruff bristle wide. “As though I would allow anything of the sort,” Temeraire said, indignantly.

“What now?” Granby said, dully; he was bent forward against Temeraire’s neck and had his forehead pressed against his good arm, against the sun which was climbing towards its zenith.

“He says that you should not be afraid, because Manca has an excellent ayllu and will take you into it, if he should kill Iskierka. But there is no need to worry: I have told him you would of course stay with me: and if that silver dragon should try to take you, I will fight him.”

“Sir, I make noon,” Forthing said, and at the same time Hualpa sat up on his haunches and shook his head in evident signal. The Copacati left off his conversation and turned to face Iskierka across the court, his feathered wings outspread with the tips brushing the ground.

Iskierka followed his model, drawing her coiling length beneath her and stretching wide her own wings, the membrane translucent in the bright sun and the color flat in comparison with the Incan dragon’s long, glittering scales. “What effect do you suppose it may have, upon the beast’s prowess; the feathers, I mean?” Hammond asked Forthing interestedly, tone-deaf to the situation.

“Well—” Forthing said, “they have a look of scales; I expect they may make it nastier to get at the wings if she goes after them, fighting—”

“She won’t go after the wings,” Ferris said, a little rudely, “unless she hasn’t any sense. His neck is twelve points from the shoulder-joint, so he can look all the way round: if she closes with him there, he’ll just turn his head and plant those fangs right below her breastbone: he won’t need to be a Longwing for that to do the job.”

Forthing said, “If she grappled; I don’t suppose anyone has ever heard of clawing, on a pass—”

“Gentlemen,” Laurence said, sharply, and they both subsided; Granby did not look much happier.

Perhaps another forty dragons had descended upon the temple and ranged themselves upon the steps of the pyramid: the largest four, who shared their level, all of them easily of heavy-weight class and ornamented with sufficient gold and silver to put a duchess to shame; but even these were accompanied only by a relatively few people, around whom they coiled their bodies jealously. When they looked, they looked not at Temeraire and Kulingile, but at himself and Granby and the others of their party, and there was an envious quality to the looks.

“Will you ask Hualpa whether there are an uncommon number of dragons in this city?” Laurence asked Temeraire, low.

“Certainly; this is the third largest city of Chirisuyo, and perhaps the eleventh largest in all Pusantinsuyo,” Hualpa said—meaning, he clarified, the southernmost province of the empire, one of eight such provinces, and its second most populous part; a hasty sketchwork elicited that the imperial territory extended now to the neighborhood of the Straits of Magellan, since the reign of the last Sapa Inca but one.

“If half of the local beasts are here, which I must assume unlikely,” Hammond said, “then in seven such cities—without consideration for the beasts which live in the more remote areas—”

His calculations were interrupted by all the dragons setting up a roar in full voice, Kulingile and Temeraire belatedly sitting up on their haunches to join in; before the noise had died away, the Copacati was launching himself aloft, and Iskierka shot after him.

Their first passes were mere flourishes: the Copacati darting in and back away at once, a baiting maneuver; Iskierka snapped her jaws at him striking-quick, but without much of an attempt to get near: only the clashing of her teeth chasing him back. Their shadows marked their positions upon the ground: Temeraire had gathered that the courtyard itself formed the boundary of their struggle, and leaving its bounds was tantamount to yielding; Laurence could see Iskierka casting a quick eye down to place herself, before she launched her own probing attack.

She looped towards the sun and went in high, claws outstretched, and the Copacati was for a moment slow to react—“Bloody hell, it’s a feint; damn you,” Granby yelled up at Iskierka, “don’t—”

Too late: she was plunging at the Copacati’s exposed back, and as she descended the other dragon abruptly convulsed his body nearly in half, and so managed to flip himself to receive her with bared fangs already glistening. A low hiss of approval rose from the stands: the dragons sat up, anticipating.

But Iskierka had already begun to veer off from her straight-line course: the initial movements, Laurence realized, camouflaged by the sun backing her. Her back coils rolled, and their weight pulled her along; she fell away to the side and cleared the Copacati’s striking range: by feet rather than by yards, Laurence judged, peering through his glass, but good enough; then she was circling away again to the far end of the courtyard limits.

Willing to be even-handed in their evaluations, the spectator dragons hissed for her as well, with even louder enthusiasm; Hualpa said something to Temeraire. “He says this has all the makings of a really excellent fight, which honors the gods,” Hammond said, “and perhaps it will end in—” He slowed and awkwardly finished, “in a death; but this I gather, Captain Granby, is a most uncommon occurrence.”

“That was a nice piece of maneuvering,” Temeraire said, rather grudging, “and his, also; but I do not think he can be classed with the very most dangerous sort of dragon. You saw, Laurence, that he did not even try to spit at Iskierka; which means he must have some limit to his supply, or else he might as well have had a go; or perhaps he must bite to have any effect, after all.”

The Copacati was beating almost directly up and wagging his body as he did, offering his belly: a provocation which Iskierka was happy to answer. She barreled across the opening space towards him, jaws wide, and Laurence thought perhaps she meant to flame; but instead she veered off again short, angling low as she did, and let her hindquarters and tail with their bristling spikes go raking over his lower belly in passing.

The blow could only have been glancing; the Copacati shrilled with displeasure more than pain, and the watching dragons clicked their talons against the stone. “She has made the first touch,” Temeraire translated.

“Huzzah,” shouted one of the sailors, and the others took it up; several removed their shirts and waved them, in the nature of impromptu flags.

“There is no call for that, particularly when it is very early on,” Temeraire said with a sullen air; the men paid no attention, but yelled more encouragement: “Go on, lassie!” bellowed one deep-voiced seaman, “go on, give him what-for!”

Iskierka flicked a pleased glance down, and even turned away from the fight and flew a low pass in answer along the stands, letting one wing-tip nearly trail the ground and stretching her length impressively. The wind of her passage kicked up dust and a clatter of small stones, so Temeraire snorted and raised up a wing protectively to shield them; this in no wise dampened the enthusiasm of the men.

“Keep your eyes on him, you wretched vainglorious creature,” Granby yelled, but his objections were drowned out, and during Iskierka’s distraction the Copacati had taken advantage to take on more altitude; he now circled far above, with full command of the field, and Iskierka was open to him below: his shadow on the courtyard only a small irregular smudge, and hers nearly full-sized.

Hualpa made a rough tchach sound deep in his throat, disapproving, and Iskierka was flying a little awkwardly, circling up and trying to keep her head turned on one side as she did, so she could watch the Copacati’s flight. It was a crabbed position, difficult to maintain, and as they watched Iskierka plainly lost patience for it, shook her head vigorously back and forth, and threw herself instead directly into a climb.

The Copacati immediately stooped towards her, claws beneath him outstretched: he had blown out his air, and his feather-scales were sleeked down, so he arrowed towards her with all his weight behind him, at a shocking speed. “Oh, oh,” Kulingile said, and even Temeraire sat up with his ruff flattening; Granby’s hands were bled-pale on the makeshift rope of their harness.

An impact on almost any point would surely fling her down upon the stone, stunned and easy prey for finishing, and Laurence could not see how she was to avoid it, save by throwing herself so wide she would fall out of the courtyard’s bounds. And then as the Copacati came, Iskierka herself blew out her air, steam jetting in a frenzy from every spike, and dropped towards the ground with him instead of continuing to a meeting.

His speed was greater; in an instant he was alongside, and hissing struck, but she jerked her head aside and lashed him with her claws to keep him back; then they broke apart again: both dragons had to make their turn and beat back up, furiously gasping, to keep from striking the ground.

They rose through the lingering cloud of steam which Iskierka had produced, a glowing haze illuminated from above by the sun, and dispersed it. Trailing fog, both peeled away to either side and circled at their opposite ends, to catch their breath and look for some advantage, having had time to take full measure of one another now.

And the Copacati had taken Iskierka’s, certainly. He settled himself comfortably into his circling pattern, flicking his tail idly in a manner which suggested he was prepared to so remain for any length of time; he watched Iskierka, and his jaws were parted, but he made no move towards her. “Oh, damn him,” Granby said.

This time he did not even have to offer his belly to entice her in. Iskierka, having circled half-a-dozen times, was already visibly grown tired of the inaction, and snorted her impatience. She broke her position, ceding the advantage, and began another pass at the Copacati. He completed his circle and seemed as though he would begin another, which would have left him coming out of the pattern just in time to meet her; but as she neared, he abruptly pumped his wings twice and shot forward with surprising speed, opening his jaws wide.

His head drew back on its neck, momentarily like a cobra ready to strike, and he spat: but even as he did, Iskierka coming to meet him opened her own jaws, and her flame boiled up out of her throat and seared the air between them.

The thin black stream of poison was caught and scorched, with a stench so powerful it reached the ground; an acrid black cloud rose up, and the dragons both wheeled back from it in either direction. The Copacati was reeling away while giving small cries of distress, black scorch-marks streaked over his face and forequarters, stark upon the silver scales. Iskierka did not give quarter, but circled back and pressed hard upon him, breathing another gout of flame from which he flinched sideways, and then another; and suddenly all the dragons were roaring once again, for the Copacati’s shadow had slipped out of the courtyard, and fallen into the running stream.

Chapter 9

“MOST REMARKABLE,” Hualpa said yet again, inclining his head in compliment while Iskierka preened; Manca Copacati was huddled sulking at the far end of the courtyard, with a handful of attendants washing down his hurts with water from the fountain, and applying some sort of ointment.

“After all, he did not know that she could breathe fire; it seems to me that is a slightly—a very slightly ramshackle sort of trick to use, to win. At least, it is not as impressive as if he had known—” Temeraire said; or rather, wanted to say; but in the end, he could not justify it to himself: too mean-spirited, and he had a horror of so appearing before Laurence. Instead he grudgingly said, “That was nicely fought,” to Iskierka, in congratulations, and privately determined to himself that the next time they should have any call for fighting, he would show what he could do.

“Yes,” Iskierka said complacently, “and I suppose they will know better than to challenge me in future; now you may tell that governor we would like to know the way to take Taruca back to his home.”

This required a brief pause, for several large roasts were being brought out at that moment: llamas on spits, their fat still sizzling and dripping on the ground as they were carried in by young men staggering beneath the weight, and two extremely nice ones were delivered to Iskierka, who fell upon them at once.

“Hm,” Hualpa said, gnawing on his spit thoughtfully, when they had eaten—it was made of some sort of interestingly flavored wood, which was very pleasant to have upon the tongue when the meat was done. “So you really do mean to give him away? I thought you were only saying so, as an excuse.”

“Whyever would we have made up such an excuse?” Temeraire said. “It is not as though Iskierka—or any of us—minded fighting, if anyone wanted a fight with us.”

Hualpa shrugged one massive shoulder. “You Europeans are always lying about one thing or another,” an accusation which Temeraire did not think justified, and in any case, he was Chinese, “but if you really do not want him, he might as well remain here. I would be pleased to take him into my own ayllu, in fact. There is no sense in dragging an old man halfway across the empire just to leave him somewhere else.”

“Indeed, Captain,” Hammond said to Laurence eagerly, having overheard this suggestion, “you must admit there is a great deal of sense in what he says: and it is plain to see they have no notion of slavery, at least in the Western mode; there is surely no cruelty or abuse—”

“Sir,” Laurence said, cutting him short, “will you ask the gentleman if he prefers to remain here, or be taken to his first-proposed destination?” and Hammond sighed even before he had put the question; Taruca had no hesitation in affirming his wish to be taken home, with an enthusiasm increased by his growing belief in its chances of being accomplished.

When Temeraire had made clear that they were quite firm in their intentions, Hualpa also sighed. “Well, as that is the grounds on which you accepted the challenge, I suppose the law is now with you,” he said. “I will give you right of passage to Titicaca, then; and as long as you are there, you may as well continue on to Cusco, and see what the Sapa Inca will make of you: I have heard there are some Europeans to be welcomed there, presently, so perhaps it will be permitted.”

“Is Cusco the capital, then?” Temeraire said. “Is it very far from Titicaca?”

“Two days’ easy flying, I would call it,” Hualpa said.

“Oh,” Hammond said, and all the objections he had begun to make to Laurence abruptly fell silent.

“I wonder he should be so doubtful, when we have been laying ourselves all-out for his sake,” Granby said, perhaps with a shade of resentment: he had gone all over Iskierka’s head himself, by hand, making certain not a drop of venom had landed which might later roll into a nostril or an eye-socket or her jaws. “You would think he might believe, by now.”

“I am grateful; but I have been stolen fourteen times, since this,” Taruca said, touching his scarred face, when the question had been put to him. “But if Inti wills it, I will be glad to go home; if you can take me.”

His latest cause for doubt was a merely practical one: the rope-and-sailcloth rigging they had put together would not do for very much longer. Shipley and all the sailors with any skill at needlework had been at it daily, but by now it was more patch than original matter, and three weeks in unfamiliar high country would certainly be past its limits, unless they liked to risk plunging to their deaths upon the jagged mountain-sides of the Andes. But they had no supply. Hualpa had been generous enough to make them free of the countryside, hunting, but while there were enough llamas running wild and untended to feed the dragons to their satisfaction, there was no such easy source of leather: they had not even a single leatherworker left, of their ground crews, and the nearest thing was one old round-bellied sailor who vaguely remembered a childhood’s apprenticeship to a tanner, of a few months’ duration.

Gong Su had begun laying up stores as best he could lacking salt; Temeraire had knocked him down a large hollow tree, for smoking, and he had somehow managed to acquire a local technique of drying meat through observation and pantomime. Some he also endeavored to exchange for sacks of dried maize. “I make no promises that it will eat well,” he said to Laurence, having organized several of the sailors to lug the sacks back to their ragged little tent-camp on the city outskirts, “but at least we will not starve.”

But though their pile of llama hides rose, the best leather they were able to produce was only a half-rotten scaly-natured material, which stank queerly and gave no-one much confidence in its holding up to even the most sedate flight. “But sir,” Forthing said privately, “I don’t answer for the men if we don’t leave soon: they will be at the temple, the first chance they get. I have had to chase a dozen of ’em down this week, and Battersea made it all the way: was busy chipping away at the wall with his pocket-knife, when I came on him.”

Nor was this their only concern regarding the men: at the beginning of their third week of labor, Forthing came to report two gone missing entirely, and four days later Handes disappeared as well. “If it were him alone, sir, I would suppose he had run off,” Forthing said, “but Griggs was not meant for hanging; and Yardley is too damned lazy even to go after the gold unless someone were marching him to it. What if they should have them here, those bunyips—” these creatures, native to the desert of the Australian continent, having been responsible for similar disappearances when first encountered.

“This is settled country,” Laurence said, “and I cannot imagine Hualpa leaving us unwarned of such a peril, if it existed; nor such incaution as the local populace show, about walking in the open. No: I must assume they have been stolen, in the charming local style,” he finished dryly.

“And how the devil are we to find them, I would like to know,” Granby added.

Temeraire was indignant and determined to pursue inquiries; but without much success, until several days later Ferris came into camp with Griggs, an awkward expression, and half-a-dozen men carrying baskets, which when he had gestured to have them set down proved to be full of excellent leather, thick and well-cured. “Sir,” he said to Laurence, “I hardly know if you will think I have done well—I don’t know myself—”

“Where has all this come from, Mr. Ferris?” Laurence said, putting down the lid of the basket.

“It is for Handes,” Ferris said, “and for Yardley; payment, I mean. Or something like it, anyway: the land on the other side of that woods belongs to a dragon, and it seems he has a fellow there who can speak Spanish and a little English—ran with a missionary, a few years ago—and he crept over at night and persuaded them to go.”

“Persuaded them?” Laurence said, in some incredulity, rising: Ferris flushed.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “I have seen them—well, Griggs, here; Yardley I saw putting his head around a corner peering at me, and Handes wouldn’t show himself anywhere as long as I was there. Griggs has thought better of it, but the others wouldn’t come away.”

Griggs looked uneasy and ashamed, and muttered when Laurence looked at him: “Which we were promised no work, sir,” he said, “and a lot of gold, and women; but then I was thinking about my old mum and how she would manage, so—”

“Well, Mr. Griggs,” Laurence said grimly, “I will not count you a deserter as you have thought better of it before we have left port, as it were; but you will not stir out of camp another instant while we are here. Mr. Ferris, pray explain yourself.”

“Sir, I meant to round them up,” Ferris said, “and I had words with that fellow, the missionary’s guide, about what he meant by it, and how our dragons would take it; so then he said as they did not want to go back, it seemed hard on them to be dragged; what if we should take some gifts, in exchange, and let them stay: and he offered me the leather. And—” He paused, and then with a small helpless shrug said, “Sir, it seemed to me, what was the sense in bringing them back, when instead—”

“—we might sell them for our gain?” Laurence said. Ferris bit his lip and was silent.

“Laurence,” Granby said, with another basket open and running the leather through his hands, “I don’t mean to quarrel with you over managing the sailors, in the least; but I will say I would damned well rather have six baskets of this leather than Handes, any road; and I would call us lucky to find anyone to take him at the price. We might leave him, and fetch Yardley back?”

“I cannot disagree as far as Handes is concerned,” Temeraire put in, nosing at the basket appreciatively, “and were we not going to hang him, when next we might have a court-martial? But Laurence, I do of course take your point: we cannot be letting strange dragons lure away our men, and think they may do so unchecked; very soon they should be coming after my crew. Perhaps I had better go and speak to this dragon: and if he would like to fight, I am sure I would be willing to oblige him.”

Laurence ran a hand through his hair—already disordered in the day’s work, and now certain to be more so—and stared at Griggs, with his lowered head. For a man to walk headlong and willfully into slavery, even under the most sybaritic inducement, was beyond comprehension; it was the same spirit, Laurence supposed helplessly, which induced men to yield themselves and their nation to the dominion of a Napoleon.

Handes, at least, could not be accused of yielding merely to folly and blind greed: he had his life to gain, and Laurence did not so love hanging men that he felt a particular eagerness to pursue the end at any cost. And yet Handes had more than earned the penalty—

“I am not suggesting we ought to let a condemned man run free,” Granby said. “But he hasn’t been tried yet, you know; and we are not properly his officers. A court-martial might let him off with a flogging, at that; it is the sort of thing the Navy will do once in a while, when there are aviators in the case: begging your pardon, of course.”

“The Navy does not take so generous a view of mutineers under any circumstances,” Laurence said. “And even so: there is a difference in allowing the man to remain behind and live to be of use to someone else—in some fashion—and accepting payment for him, as though we were prepared to sell our own.”

“You might think of it as a dowry,” Granby suggested, with a suspicious twitching around his mouth.

“Yes; thank you, John,” Laurence said dryly.

He went with Temeraire to the neighboring estate—a large and prosperous farm, with more of the great stone storehouses visible in the distance at the end of the fields, and the residences a wide courtyard bordered around by more of the thatch-roofed huts. The dragon, a middling creature of some ten or eleven tons, was at that moment engaged in delivering a load of timber to the waiting hands of a dozen men evidently preparing to erect another of these houses. She put it down and hopped over to put herself between them and Temeraire, as he winged in for a landing.

“He says you are only going to kill him,” Magaya said in great indignation, when they had confronted her, “and not even for some particularly special reason, such as a very important sacrifice; and no-one even does that anymore. It is a wicked waste, and I am sure the governor knows nothing of it; he could not allow it, if he did. I will not give him back to you: so!” And she flung back her head defiantly; although the effect was rather spoiled by her jumping back hastily when Temeraire frilled his ruff out wide and made a low, rumbling roar in his throat.

“I am sure I have never seen anything like the behavior of dragons in this country,” Temeraire said, “it is beyond everything; first there is Palta, calling me a bunyip of some sort, and Hualpa saying we are thieves; and now you, stealing our people—”

“I did not!” she said. “They came to me! That is not the same at all—”

“Stealing,” Temeraire repeated, “and then brazening at me, as though you were up to my weight; I suppose because you think you can have a champion fight me in your stead—which might be tolerable if you were in the right, but you certainly are not; and in any case I could beat any champion who liked to try.”

“My dear,” Laurence said aside, laying a restraining hand upon Temeraire’s neck, when Temeraire had finished translating this exchange, “I must remind you it is not stealing: these men are the subjects of the King, but even so do not belong to him, as property, and saving the obligations of their duty and the law have the right to dispose of themselves as they please.”

“Well—yes, of course,” Temeraire said, although Laurence could not help but notice that Temeraire seemed very willing to enter into the local notion of possession where it came to his crew, “but you see, Laurence, to her it is certainly stealing; that is, she meant to steal them and did not know they were not mine; so it does not make her less a thief, because they might not really be so.”

“I am in the right,” Magaya said meanwhile, in her defense, “because you have not taken proper care of them. If I were to start hanging my men from trees, and beating them, and keeping them at hard labor all the time, of course they would complain of me to the governor, and find someone who would look after them better: so of course the law allows for it.”

“I have, too—” Temeraire began.

“You have not,” Magaya said. “Why, they are all in rags, nearly, and not one of them has anything nice that anyone can see.”

Temeraire flattened his ruff, and looked uncomfortable, and had to be pressed to translate this. “But that is only because we have had a very difficult journey,” he said defensively, “and because I have Laurence’s best things put safely by. Anyway,” he added, “how should you know anything of the sort, if you were not watching and luring people away.”

Magaya puffed up her neck and shoulder feathers and sank her head back into them in an attitude of embarrassment, giving something of the appearance of a huddled chick.

“So,” Temeraire continued, triumphantly, “it is nonsense to say my men ran away to you: perhaps Handes did, but that is because he does not want to be punished for behaving very badly indeed; but Griggs and Yardley only came because you made them sneaking promises behind my back. It is not to be borne, and I am sure the law does not make provision for that.”

“I do not admit doing anything of the sort,” Magaya said, with dignity, “but even if I had, they would not have listened, if they were not dissatisfied. Anyway,” she went on hurriedly, “as you are so upset, I see now that you do value them: but perhaps I might give you some more presents, instead?”

“There can be no question of leaving them behind, especially Yardley,” Temeraire said. “They are the King’s subjects, and members of our crew—”

“Oh, very well: but you might leave Handes, at least,” she said. “You do not want him, after all; you only mean to put him to death. I could give you clothing, so your other men would not have to be so ragged—”

“Well,” Temeraire said, and, Laurence was sorry to see, very enthusiastically entered into what he could tell even without benefit of translation was nothing less than haggling over price.

He eventually sat back on his haunches, satisfied, and Magaya smoothed down her collar of feathers in equal pleasure; she called over her shoulder to the watching workmen, and several of them trooped away to the storehouses: returning momentarily with many more baskets, of clothing and the leather sandals worn locally, of dried maize, and even one smallish one full of salt.

Yardley was brought out of one of the huts, and slunk over with a sullen and guilty air. “Sure I am coming down sick, sir, with that plague as killed all those people,” he said, “so I thought I might as well stay here to die, and for them to give you goods for all the fellows—”

“That is enough, Mr. Yardley,” Laurence said, putting a halt to this flow of excuses. “You are very fortunate indeed that Mr. Ferris found you; do you imagine that you would be permitted to live a life of indolence once we had gone, and the beast no longer needed to keep you seduced to hold you by her? I see no idle hands on this farm.”

“Sure I don’t mind work,” Yardley said, outrageously, then added, “and she is the sweetest thing you ever saw, sir; as friendly as could be,” which amazed Laurence for a moment, looking at Magaya with her eleven tons and viciously serrated teeth, until he saw in the doorway of the hut a young woman standing and waving cheerful farewell, all unclothed save a blanket wrapped around her and under one bare shoulder.

He shook his head. “Temeraire,” he said, “will you find out from Magaya if that young woman has been made promises—if she expects marriage—”

“What do you mean?” Magaya said suspiciously. “You cannot have her!—or do you mean you will leave Yardley with us, after all?”

“No, no,” Temeraire said, “I mean—Laurence, what do I mean?” he asked doubtfully.

“If there is a child,” Laurence said, “there must be consideration for its care.”

“Of course we will take care of it,” Magaya said, when this was put to her. “The mother is in our ayllu, so the baby will be, too.”

“Yes, but,” Laurence began, “have her chances of marriage been materially harmed, by her—her congress, with—”

“Why would they be?” Magaya said.

“I am sure I do not know,” Temeraire said, and looked at Laurence inquiringly.

“As she is no longer virgin,” Laurence said in despair, forcing himself to bring it out. “And even if that dragon does not care either way, perhaps men will; pray inquire of the young lady, herself.”

“Very well, but it seems silly to me,” Temeraire said, and when he put the question to her the young woman blinked up at him and looked as perplexed as Magaya herself had. Laurence shook his head and gave up: the young woman plainly was neither friendless nor excessively sorry at the desertion; nor could he feel he was doing her any great disservice by taking Yardley away.

Of Handes, he saw nothing all the time, save perhaps a skulking half-crouched shadow the sun threw out from behind one of the storehouses, as though someone had hidden in the space between the wall and where the roof reached down nearly to the ground. Laurence looked irresolutely; he did not intend to make himself a prig, and he felt all the compulsion of their dire need and the mercy of leaving Handes behind, and yet there was everything to dislike in the principles of such an act, if not the practicals.

“I do not think there can be anything really wrong in it,” Temeraire said. “Magaya seems a decent sort now that she has come around to behaving better, and I am sure she will take excellent care of Handes: which is more than he deserves, anyway. Besides, Laurence,” he added, “you have just said yourself that the King’s subjects have the right to do as they wish, so long as it is consistent with their duty: Handes wishes to stay here, and it seems to me even if he did not wish to do so, one might consider it his duty to do so, since we will come by so many useful goods, in consequence.”

“It is no free man’s duty to allow himself to be sold into slavery, in a foreign land, no matter how good the price,” Laurence said.

“It is not exactly slavery, though,” Temeraire said. “You would not say that you were a slave, after all, only because you are mine.”

It was some time since Laurence had considered himself entitled to demand Temeraire’s obedience, which otherwise might have enabled him to explain the contradiction easily; and on the face of it, he realized in some dismay, the relations between captain and beast could with more rationality be given the character of possession by the latter, than the former.

“I dare say,” Granby said, when Laurence had laid this insight before him that evening, while all around them the camp bustled with activity, as the new harnesses were stitched together under Shipley’s busy and strutting supervision. “At least I am damned sure Iskierka would agree with you on the subject; pray don’t say it so loud. This wretched country cannot be a good influence: we may count ourselves lucky if Temeraire don’t go home thinking dragons ought to have men and not just votes.”

Chapter 10

HOME AND ENGLAND seemed very distant in the morning, when they came into the foothills of the great clawing peaks of the Andes, serrated and blue-shadowed where the long swaths of snow lay on their sides. The river divided into a hundred little tributaries trickling down the mountain-sides as they climbed, and by evening the dragons were landing in a high meadow gasping for breath. They had made scarcely ten miles if their progress were to be measured as a line drawn on a map, Laurence thought, and more than a hundred straight up.

He stumbled himself, climbing down from Temeraire’s back, and they were all of them short of breath and queerly sick with some miasma of the mountain air. A few of the men fell over heaving like bellows, and lay where they fell.

Laurence walked to the edge of the meadow where it ended in cliff to breathe deep of some cleaner air and pull it into his lungs, and found he was looking down at a series of terraced fields: man-made yet lying fallow; maize plants struggled with weeds and tall grasses for dominion, and even a few tools lay half-buried in the greenery, abandoned.

All the rest of that journey had the same quality, as though they walked through a stranger’s unattended house, neither host nor servants there to greet them. They saw once in a while dragons, some even laboring in the fields and others carrying loads of timber. Only once in the first few days did they see any human life: a couple of young girls sitting in a field with their arms wrapped around their knees, watching over a great herd of grazing llamas in a high valley.

They threw a swift startled glance up at the strange dragons and dived for cover into a nearby cave little more than a crevasse in the rock, too narrow for any dragon to reach into, and rang out a clanging bell for alarm. “Pray let us continue on,” Hammond shouted anxiously in Laurence’s ear, “as quickly as may be; there is nothing served by offering even the appearance of provocation—”

“We might have stayed and had some of those llamas, fresh,” Iskierka said, later that evening; instead they had come to ground in another abandoned field with a storehouse, and she was eating a porridge of dried maize flavored with the smoked llama meat which Gong Su had prepared.

“It is truly wonderful, the quantity of supply which this nation has provided along its roads,” Hammond said, inspecting the storehouse. “I believe we have seen not fewer than six to-day alone; do you agree with me, gentlemen?”

Gong Su also was interested in the construction of the storehouse, and when he saw Laurence looking, showed where his attention had been drawn to its design. “It must work excellently, for draining the rainfall: certainly this food has not been stored recently, but very little is spoilt.”

Easy, also, to build up great stores when so far as they could see there were few to consume them. There was something strange and sad in the dragons tilling the great fields, to raise crops which no-one would eat. The handful of beasts to which Temeraire spoke looked at the two hundred men and more aboard with eyes at once eager and resentful: and many offers were made him.

“There once were more men,” Taruca said, when Laurence questioned him. “Many more: my grandfather told me there were so many that only half the ayllu had even one dragon among their curaca—” by which word he seemed to mean the chiefs of each clan. “It was a great honor to persuade a dragon to join one’s ayllu: a great warrior might win one for his kin, or a skillful weaver.”

“So you see, Captain,” Hammond said, listening, “I was not at all wrong: it is not slavery, in the ordinary sense.”

“It was not, in those times,” Taruca said. “Why does a dragon wish to say how a man shall live his life? The honor of the ayllu was the honor of the dragon; its strength her strength; they did not govern. But then the plagues came: and men died, so now nearly all the chiefs of all the ayllus are dragons. And they are grown anxious, and do not like us to go anywhere; and rightly when they steal from one another.”

There were people, of course: the country was not deserted. As they came northward into the more populous regions, men might be seen openly upon the roads with llama pack-trains, and dragons in a particular blue fringe flew the route. “She says they are watching the roads to make sure there is no theft,” Temeraire said, when one of these had stopped them in their way and demanded that they land in a deserted valley, and show her their safe-conduct from the governor.

All three dragons were inclined to be offended by her intrusion, as she could not have weighed above two tons: to Laurence’s eye she was smaller than the little courier Volly. She did not seem to care that she was dwarfed by them, however, and when she saw the men were most of them in native dress—courtesy of Magaya’s gifts—she insisted on having every last one paraded before her, so she could assure herself of their indeed being all Europeans. This caused some difficulty, as they were not; and aside from the handful of Malay and Chinese sailors who made her most suspicious, several of the British men were tanned too dark and were forced to disrobe to reveal their natural color; and then Demane and Sipho and the three other black men among the crew, she suspected of being made-up in reverse fashion.

“Demane is mine,” Kulingile said, when he felt she had looked too long. She only ruffled her feathers up and back at him in answer, still peering closely, and he reached the end of his patience. Sitting up, he spread wide his wings and threw out his chest: he had always before been remarkably even-tempered, and not often given to parading himself, but he had despite all their privations continued to grow, and when a dragon of nearly thirty tons chose, he could no more be ignored than an avalanche. The patrol-dragon gave a hop sideways, startled into looking up at him, and he threw up his head and roared.

Kulingile’s voice had remained thready and piping, but his roar shared no such qualities. It did not have the same eerie and particular resonance as the divine wind, but the noise was shocking nonetheless, sourced in so vast a pair of lungs, and at such a near distance. Involuntarily many of the men covered their ears, and when Kulingile leaned forward, the patrol-dragon skipped prudently back still farther, made some hasty remarks about being satisfied, and scurried into the air.

“You did not need to make quite such a fuss,” Temeraire protested, his ruff flattened backwards. “She might have been more polite, of course, but she was very small: it is not as though she were really any threat.”

“She was not so small she is not bigger than Demane,” Kulingile said, which was inarguable, “and those dragons are quick, too; what if she had snatched him up, and I could not have caught her? Anyway,” he added, with a worrying rumble, “I am done with swallowing insults.”

“I hope he does not mean to be quarrelsome,” Laurence said to Temeraire, troubled, that evening when they had made their camp; Kulingile had retreated from all their company and was brooding over three slaughtered llamas. “He has never before behaved so—”

“I expect he is still distressed,” Temeraire said. “I will confess, Laurence, I am not wholly easy in my own mind, either, where the sailors are concerned. How much more dreadful it must be for Kulingile when they actually laid hands on his captain; and I must say, Demane might be kinder,” he added.

Laurence considered at first whether to apply to Roland, to speak with Demane, but realized they were no longer sitting together as had been their habit: she was putting Gerry, and Baggy with him, to mathematics, the first time Laurence could recall her ever showing the least unforced engagement upon any sort of schoolwork. The torn skin of her injury had mended as well as might have been expected, and she had only a tracery of thin lines crossing her cheek and a crook in her nose to show for it now, which she disdained to conceal: instead she had plaited her hair still more severely back.

Demane meanwhile sat a little distance away from her, just past the limits of intrusion, and watched her broodingly; he broke only now and again to pass a suspicious gaze over the sailors, particularly Baggy, who came in for his coldest looks. Roland steadfastly refused to meet Demane’s gaze all the while. So Laurence could not ask her to breach a silence whose cause he could only approve, if she had taken his last advice to heart, and meant to add a proper distance, however inconvenient that might prove in this particular circumstance.

Demane’s temper could not be said to have improved with her reproof, if reproof there had been. “I don’t mean to be always sitting in a basket, being watched,” Demane said, shortly, when Laurence spoke to him directly of Kulingile’s distress, without taking his eyes away from Roland. “You do not hang back, when there is fighting, even when Granby says you ought,” which was a shot that went home too well. Laurence had often been reproved for hazarding himself further than his duty might allow, as an aviator, and had never yet been able to make himself cleave to a practice which, in a Navy officer, must have instead borne the name of rank cowardice.

“There is a distinction,” Laurence said, “between seeing one’s duty differently, and neglecting it. To render your beast unhappy merely for the sake of demonstrating an excessive independence, with no pressing cause, can only be called the latter.”

“You shall not lecture Demane,” Kulingile flared, raising his head abruptly from where he lay, having overheard. “He is also a captain, and I am larger than Temeraire; you do not outrank him.”

“Oh!” Temeraire said, indignantly rousing in his turn, “I call that nice, when you should not ever have grown so large if I had not carried you halfway across Australia, and shared my kangaroos when you could not fly yourself; and anyway even if Laurence and Demane are both captains, Laurence is the senior.”

“No, he isn’t,” Kulingile said, “for he was not a captain, when Demane harnessed me; he had been dismissed the service.”

“That,” Temeraire said, “was only in the nature of an interlude; it does not signify.”

“It does, too,” Kulingile said, “for Caesar told me, in Sydney, that the captains are all on a list, and one’s name goes on it in order; so Demane is ahead of Laurence on it.”

“And Granby is ahead of them both.” Iskierka smugly flung her own fuel on the fire, and with Temeraire’s ruff bristling out fiercely, the three looked likely enough to come to blows in a moment.

“Captain Laurence has been restored with seniority!” Hammond cried, rising from his own place by the fire to break into the looming quarrel, and added urgently when the dragons had looked over, “And if I am not mistaken, Captain, that dates from your having made post, in the Navy.”

“So Laurence is first, and by a great margin,” Temeraire said, with intense satisfaction, and Kulingile looked at once mulish and sullen: so matters had only been worsened, and over a mere triviality. Laurence had not troubled himself to inquire regarding his place on the Admiralty lists: even more meaningless than his polite fiction of a reinstatement.

“Regardless,” Laurence said, “Captain Demane, I do offer you my apologies; it is perfectly true that I spoke as I ought not, to a fellow captain: interference is not allowed in the Corps, and for good cause; I hope you will allow me to cry your pardon.”

“Oh,” Demane said, blankly: wind spilled out of his sails. “I don’t—yes, sir, of course?” he finished uncertainly, and then looked at Roland, who hastily averted her own gaze. Gong Su called them to dinner then, interrupting. But when they had eaten, Demane strode over with a determinedly casual air to sit with Kulingile after all; he slept between the dragon’s forelegs rather than going out with his sling to forage as had been his wont, the previous nights of their journey.

Laurence was prepared to find a handsome settlement at Lake Titicaca, from the quality and regularity of the roads and the general excellence of the construction, but his expectations were inadequate for the vista, when they at last saw the blue haze of the water: some distance from the shores, a great city was laid out before them, centered on a raised plaza dotted by immense carved figures, and surrounded by curious fields carved into rows flooded with water.

“Is that your home?” he asked Taruca, as they drew near. “There is a city of red stone—”

Taruca shook his head. “No, that is Tiwanaku; but there is no-one who lives there now,” and as they flew past, Laurence saw that the broad roads were deserted, and the great temple, for so it seemed to him, stood empty; the fields were fallow and dry.

They continued to the lake: or the inland sea, Laurence might as easily have called it, stretching enormously wide and cupped by mountains, and of a piercing and almost unnatural shade of blue. There were villages scattered about on the lake islands, and the largest of these supported more than one settlement and was nearly ringed round with the cultivated terraces.

Taruca directed them towards the island’s southern end, where a broad hillside cut with terraces rose up from a series of storehouses at its base, and at the summit a great courtyard where a truly immense dragon slept: longer than Kulingile even, and perhaps near him in weight, although that was difficult to tell beneath the feathery scales; she was burnt orange and violet in her markings, but the scales were faded along their length and nearly grey at the tips, and her eyes, opening as they landed before her, were filmy with age.

Four other dragons took to the air from other points around the lake directly they put down, and came winging over: all hatchlings of her get, Laurence gathered from the debate which followed between the dragons. “We are not here to steal anything, or anyone,” Temeraire said, exasperated at last, “indeed, if anything we are here to give you someone back: here is Taruca, who asked us to bring him to you.”

“Taruca was stolen eleven years and three months ago,” the ancient dragon said, “and none of my hatchlings could find him; what do you mean, you are here to bring him back?”

Taruca waved an arm from Temeraire’s back, and called, “I am here, curaca; I am here.”

The dragon’s enormous head swung around towards him, and she reared up her forequarters with an effort to lean forward and sniff at him. “It is Taruca,” she said, “it is—how dare you take him? I will call the law upon you at once, if you do not give him back.”

“We are giving him back!” Temeraire said. “That is why we are here; I have already told you so.”

The exchange was prolonged for several minutes more by mistrust before at last Curicuillor both understood and believed that they truly meant to give Taruca back, and without any recompense. The final resolution was indeed only achieved when he had been helped down from Temeraire’s back and guided over to her, and she had nosed him over thoroughly to make sure of him.

“Why, your nation has been unfairly maligned,” she said at last, settling slowly and painfully back onto her stone bed. “You must forgive an old beast her confusion: but indeed I cannot recall a more astonishing example of generosity to mind, from all my days. Taruca returned to us, after so long, and when we had quite given up! We must celebrate, and we must do you honor: we must feast all together, and give special thanks to Inti.”

“Yes!” Iskierka said, with enthusiasm, when Temeraire had translated the offer: they had flown the last three days with no sign of an untended herd, and they had been obliged to ration even the dried meat.

Though hastily assembled, the dinner was splendid indeed: a tender and pleasantly gamy sort of llama, lightly grilled, and five kinds of fish; with this masses of potatoes and of maize, roasted and salted and heaped with melted fat. Great cauldrons of soup were brought by one of the dragons, full of lumps later revealed to be frogs, nevertheless delicious; and were accompanied by the whole fried guinea pigs that so delighted Temeraire and the other dragons.

Besides the four dragons who had already swung over, three more came, each carrying a sizable clan, and two more dragons alone, evidently younger beasts.

“Yes; we have prospered,” Curicuillor said, with pardonable pride as she swung her faded vision over the extent of her sprawling clan. “I have given my offspring each two families, when they had grown wise enough to have charge of an ayllu of their own; and if they have done particularly well, I have let them have more.” She sighed and rearranged herself for more comfort, scales rasping faintly over the stone. “And I will do so again, soon. I am not one of those greedy clutching creatures; I will not need so many people to look after when I have gone to the other world.”

So she said, but a certain reluctance in her tone made Laurence skeptical of her claims, and her foreleg curled in jealous protection around Taruca. He made no objection, however, but sat with beatific expression holding on his lap one of his great-grandchildren, a child too young to speak and sucking thoughtfully on a rattle, made of gold and which would likely have fetched a thousand pounds at a low estimate, despite the toothmarks.

“I am endlessly grateful to you, Captain,” he said, when Laurence and Hammond had opportunity to speak with him, albeit over Curicuillor’s foreleg. “I did not believe truly until I heard the voices of my children: but you have brought me home. This is my daughter, Choque-Ocllo,” he reached out his hand, groping, to a matronly woman sitting beside him. “I have been telling her of your wish to see the Sapa Inca.”

Choque-Ocllo nodded to them equably, and said, “I do not see why it should be impossible to arrange. It has been a long time since Atahualpa, after all, and those were plainly lawless men. Your king has sent a great ayllu to speak for him, and you have proven that you are men of a different character; it is only fitting that the Sapa Inca should receive you. Although it is unfortunate you have no women with you; that girl cannot have had a child yet.”

Hammond looked confusion at Laurence, but bowed and said, “Madam, the rigors of so great a journey and a sea-voyage are sufficient to bar our subjecting a woman to them without cause; I hope their absence will give no offense, as I assure you no lack of confidence in our hosts is meant.”

“Offense?” she said. “No, none at all; but that is not the same as letting you see the Sapa Inca. But I am sending a message with you—my son Ronpa there is weaving it already, you see—and my father will add his personal testimony; if they will not let you see the Sapa Inca directly, at least the governor of Collasuyo—that is this province—will see you, and he is high in the councils of the Sapa Inca.”

The message was a peculiarly knotted cord, which Taruca called a khipu, from which long strands descended in colors; the young man was expertly forming the cord from a heap of yarn, and tying knots in irregular distances. When he had finished, he passed it along to Taruca himself, who despite his blindness ran his fingers over the cords, consulted once or twice as to the color of various strands, and then swiftly knotted on another sequence.

“Yes, here you can feel the words,” Taruca said, putting Laurence’s hand on the knots. “Some young people these days put markings on paper instead, the way you Europeans do: it is quicker, I imagine, but the old ways are best when it is information of any importance. What if it should get wet, or be torn; or chewed by insects? You could not rely upon such a thing.”

“I only wish there were some way to inquire, without giving offense, what standing his daughter has to send such a message,” Hammond said in an undertone to Laurence back at their own seats, irresolute as he turned over the mass of the knotted cord in his hands. “Are we carrying a note from a family matron, a noblewoman, or—” He shrugged helplessly.

“Any note of introduction must be an advantage,” Laurence said, “regardless; and sir, you have only to look about you: this is no private householding, but a great estate. You may surely ask the population of the place.”

When Hammond did inquire, of Choque-Ocllo, several of the dragons put up their heads at once and answered before she could—evidently with slightly different numbers, which produced an argument among them; while they quarreled, Choque-Ocllo said, “Some of them do not like to count children until they are old enough to walk: it distresses them too greatly to lose any. But in all the ayllus which have at least one chief of Curicuillor’s line, there are a little more than four thousand people: that, of course, is why other dragons will come here to steal men, sometimes; and you would be wise to keep a close watch on your own party yourselves.”

“Do they come so very often?” Temeraire turned to ask Curicuillor, having overheard Laurence’s conversation: it occurred to him, casting an eye over his crew and the sailors, that it would be as well to organize some more systematic guard, and to know just what sort of threat they faced.

“Things are better now than they were, before the patrols were formed. But still it is not as it was when I hatched,” Curicuillor said, wistful. “There was no stealing then: if a man from another’s ayllu wished to marry one of my women, he would come, and I would send a gift back; or if one took a particular fancy to a person, one would merely try and persuade them to come and stay. Why, I found a young girl once in the mountains, with a splendid voice, in an ayllu only of people with no dragon at all; so I took in all her ayllu with her and they were so very happy to come—but she died of the spotted fever, a hundred years ago.”

The dreadful decimation of the last two centuries had altered the circumstances: dragons whose entire ayllu died would steal others to replace them. “And of course they will particularly try for those like my Taruca,” Curicuillor said, nosing at him gently, “for anyone can see he will not die, at least of the pox.

“And there are laws in place now,” she continued, “against the practice; but even so some dragons will sneak about and try to steal men from very far away, so they will not be tracked down and caught: and then we cannot even find them, to challenge or to take them back.”

“And the Sapa Inca will sometimes take men and move them about, if one beast has very many and another beast has lost all of hers,” added Churki, one of her younger offspring, with a faintly resentful air, “and there is no refusing: otherwise we would have even more than we do.”

“Ah, well,” Curicuillor said, adjusting a few of her coils and resettling, “you cannot expect someone to go on if all their ayllu are dead, as though they were some savage beast in the wilderness; of course they will go raiding, then, if some measure is not taken.”

When the splendid dinner had been cleared away, at Laurence’s prompting Temeraire asked her for further direction. “Cusco is there,” Curicuillor said, showing him the way upon a wonderful map laid out in a courtyard of her home, a sort of model made of gold and gemstones, showing all the surrounding countryside, “and also we will give you another safe-conduct which you should wear upon your breast: it may help to reassure the guards as you approach the city, despite your appearance.”

Temeraire flattened his ruff; there was nothing in the least the matter with his appearance, in his opinion.

“And if you like,” Curicuillor added thoughtfully, “when you have concluded your business there, you might come back; or for that matter not go at all, as all this business of foreign wars sounds foolish to me. It is easy to get excited over fighting, but that is not mature behavior: you ought to be ready to fight if you must, to defend your ayllu or to expand your territory so they may prosper, but not just to be making noise for the sake of it. Why, here you are with nearly two hundred men, all of them of an age to sire children, and only two little ones; which is no wonder when you have no women with you.”

“Oh,” Temeraire said doubtfully. It struck him as uncomfortably remarkable: here he was across a great ocean from China, and yet this dragon who was plainly very old and wise—even if one occasionally had to repeat things several times over before she would believe them—was of nearly the same opinion regarding fighting as his own mother, Qian. He had almost convinced himself that in this one respect, perhaps the Chinese practice might be considered inferior to the West; but to have it echoed so forcefully and independently here on the other side of the world undermined his conclusion.

“We do not miss having women about,” he said, “that is, wives, which is what I suppose you mean; I should be perfectly happy to have more women like Roland about. But I have not thought of Laurence marrying.” He did not see why it should be at all desirable.

“How are there to be children, otherwise?” Curicuillor said, in a faintly exasperated tone. “I hope you do not set your heart only on one person. What if he should die with no children at all, because you are wanting all his attention: then you will be quite alone and it will serve you right, for not planning.”

Temeraire did not see why Laurence should die, at all, but he was uneasily aware that men did do so, quite often; he thought of Riley and was silent.

“Well, you are all very young,” Curicuillor said with a sigh. “I do not know what things can be like in your country, when hatchlings your age have already an ayllu of their own. You are of an age to be fighting, but so you should be with the army, and not responsible for others; it is no wonder to me that we hear such strange reports of your men.”

Heaving herself up, she padded down to the edge of the water. When Temeraire came up beside her, she shook her head out towards the far side of the lake, where a handsome clear white beach stood out from the trees. “I have meant to have Churki begin there with her ayllu, when a few more children are born,” she said, “for then we should command this part of the lake on all sides, and it would take a very brazen thief to make an attempt at us then. But there is no need to wait. Why do you not think better of this war of yours? You and your friends might stay: I will exchange with you, so you will have enough young women to start some proper families, and we will have new blood, so it will be good for all of us.”

“They do seem to arrange things better, here,” Kulingile said wistfully. They were sitting on the beach watching: one of the younger dragons was digging out a new terrace into the hillside with a party of a dozen young men and women, who were spreading out gravel of many shapes and dirt in layers to fill the space as he carried over loads of each. When the dragon had finished depositing the final layer, he settled to earth and a couple of the young women who had been sitting on the side climbed onto his back with a basket of large silver hoops, which they had been polishing all the morning, and put these back into place along his wings.

“I had much rather have Granby than a dozen other people, even if they were splendid about polishing jewels,” Iskierka said, “but they do seem to have heaps of treasure here; and I should not mind for Granby to have children.”

Temeraire did not say so, but he felt quite strongly that he would mind, if Laurence were to be very occupied with them.

“We shan’t stay here, of course,” Iskierka continued. “That would be great nonsense when there is a whole war going on in Europe, which we can go back to; but we might as well trade her some of the sailors for women. That seems to me very sensible: I do not see why we haven’t more women in our crews to begin with.”

“Well, I do not, either; Roland is particularly clever, and can be trusted with anything, even jewels,” Temeraire said. “But it is the sailors’ duty to remain with us and help to fight the war; and we may not trade them because they are not our property.”

“I don’t see why not,” Iskierka said, “if they want to stay; which they do, because I heard Granby telling Laurence that it would be a job to keep from losing half the men to desertion with women making calf-eyes at them, and silver cups on the dinner table.”

“But in that case the women very likely should not like to come,” Temeraire said. “In any case, I do not think Curicuillor should like us to carry them away, either. It is not much to say, she will trade them to us if we stay here, where she can see them anytime she likes: that is not really like giving them away.”

“Oh, well,” Iskierka said, giving up the scheme easily. “I suppose I will wait until we are home: then I will find some young women for my crew, and to have children for Granby.”

“You would not like to be always having children, would you, Laurence?” Temeraire asked that evening.

“I beg your pardon?” Laurence said, and when Temeraire had explained Iskierka’s plan was quick to assure him that he had no such desire. “I would hope,” he added, “that she means to consult John’s wishes before proceeding with this design; if there were any grounds for such hope.”

The men began to make ready to depart, the next morning, and Temeraire flew from their encampment in search of Curicuillor to make their farewells: she was back in her courtyard half-asleep, with a group of women around her weaving industriously: beautiful cloth in bright red and yellow, which Temeraire could not help but look over with an appreciative eye: not silk, but it looked nearly as fine.

“It was too much to expect that you should have so much sense, at your age,” Curicuillor said regretfully, when Temeraire explained they did not mean to stay. “But still, you have been very kind, and behaved much better than I would have expected when you are so young and from an uncivilized country. I will send Churki with you, to introduce you at the court.

“And Choque-Ocllo has given you a khipu, although even so I cannot say if they will let your men see the Sapa Inca,” she added. “Men and women have such short memories: but we have not forgotten the dreadful way Atahualpa was murdered. My own mother was alive at the time: three roomfuls of gold and silver were delivered in ransom for him, yet even so those evil men pulled him out into the great courtyard of Cajamarca and put a cord around his neck, and before anyone understood what was happening, he was strangled. Pahuac was watching all along. He threw himself off the mountains with his wings closed, afterwards, for letting it happen; after he had killed them all, of course.”

Temeraire hunched his shoulders up in horror. He had seen a hanging once, at the Channel: the traitor Choiseul, who had nearly abducted Captain Harcourt and passed secrets to Napoleon; and it had been carried out in front of his beast Praecursoris, also. But at least he had done something to invite his fate: they had not given heaps of treasure, and then been murdered out of hand.

“I do not see how Pahuac could have expected any such thing to happen: no-one could,” he said. “Those men must have been quite mad: certainly Laurence would never do anything of the sort.”

“Yes, but it is not every dragon who has the responsibility of protecting the Sapa Inca,” Curicuillor said. “Pahuac ought to have considered their being mad, and intervened sooner: but he was too afraid. That was not long after the pestilences first came, and so many were dead; he was ready to give over everything only to protect Atahualpa.

“To be fair,” she added, “those men had no dragons with them, so plainly even in your own country they were not worthy of being taken into any dragon’s ayllu: low peasants, or even thieves or murderers, I suppose.”

“Well, most men in Europe are not in any dragon’s keeping,” Temeraire said. “They are afraid of us; and also there are too many of them, and not enough of us, I think. In Britain there are ten million people, Laurence says: there was a census, in the year one.”

She had been lying at her ease, until then, her eyes half-lidded and drowsy even while she spoke; but at this she raised up her head quite wide-awake; and even the women hard at work interrupted their own conversations to stare. “Ten million men,” Curicuillor repeated. “Ten million? Is Britain a very large country?” When they had worked out the relative sizes as best they could from Temeraire’s memory, she sat back on her haunches. “Ten million, and in so small a place: there are scarcely three million in all Pusantinsuyo, these days.”

She bent her head low and was silent for several moments, desolately; her plumage flattened to her neck. Then she said to Temeraire, “You may tell them that, when you have come to Cusco: I am sure it will make them more likely to let you speak with the Sapa Inca. Ten million men! If only we had so many!”

Laurence could not be sorry to leave again, despite the unquestioned generosity of Curicuillor’s hospitality; he could not think her influence on Temeraire and the other dragons an unqualified good, in further encouraging them to embrace the local mode of thinking; and apart from this consideration a stay of any duration would surely have resulted in the rapid diminishment of their force. During the night three men had tried to creep away, and when the dragons were at last loaded for departure, Laurence was forced to ignore that another two had managed to desert despite all of Forthing’s best efforts, or there would have been no departure: in the time spent finding them, others would have run.

“Laurence,” Temeraire said frowning, when they put down for water a few hours later, “there is something wrong: we are short two men.”

So Temeraire had noticed two missing, out of nearly two hundred, when he had never before been so particular about passengers; there had of course been his favorites, among his crew, but until very lately he had rather disdained the sailors than valued them.

“Well, I do not much mind,” Temeraire said, when Laurence had persuaded him that they could not return and hunt for the deserters, “as they are not properly my crew, and I suppose we should have to give them up anyway when we come back to Britain.” He made this a question, and looked at Laurence; when Laurence had affirmed it, he sighed. “Do you think, Laurence, we shall receive a full crew again, when we have got back? It would be nice to be properly scrubbed, as a regular matter; and to have my harness better arranged, and looked-after.”

He was reconciled to the loss further when he considered that Curicuillor had provided them with an abundance of supply, and even made him a present of a pair of silver hoops, which Laurence with difficulty dissuaded him from having pierced through his wing-edges. “They would likely catch, in battle,” Laurence said.

“I am sure I could avoid that,” Temeraire said, “but it is quite true that only one pair would not be very impressive. When we should take a prize next, perhaps we may get a few dozen, and then it will be something like.”

“Something like a Covent Garden dancer,” Laurence said to Granby, with a sigh.

“You shan’t complain to me,” Granby said, with some justice.

The spring was cold and delicious, and they flew the rest of that day over a rolling grassland peopled with roving herds of wild vicuña and a handful of villages: Churki led them on, and the patrol-dragons made no attempt to check them. She had the same orange-and-violet plumage as her mother, and if not quite as large, still more than a respectable match for any Regal Copper: a beast of some twenty years’ age, she had informed Hammond. “I was with the army, until last year,” she said, with her gaze fixed on him in what could only be called an unsettling way, “and I won many honors: then I came home to learn good management from my mother before she goes to the other world. I am ready for an ayllu of my own, now. Very soon I shall begin my establishment.”

She paused and then added, “Do I understand correctly that you are not properly of Temeraire’s ayllu, yourself? And not Iskierka or Kulingile’s, either?”

“I must be flattered,” Hammond said to Laurence, “but I hope it may not be considered neglect of any possible service to our country that I do not pursue the offer; I doubt very much she would be willing to come back with me, if I did.”

“I might put it to her,” Temeraire offered. “Curicuillor was very impressed that we should have so many people in Britain, so perhaps Churki would consider it after all.”

“Oh, ah,” Hammond said, in some alarm: he had still a faintly green cast from the day’s flying, and no desire whatsoever to belong to a dragon.

The next day at morning, Churki suggested he should accompany her, flying; and when he feebly demurred she nosed at a tall stand of green-leaved shrub and said, “Brew those leaves fresh, instead of those strange dried ones you carry with you, and you will feel better; or take a handful and chew them.”

“I trust she would know if it would poison me,” Hammond said doubtfully, and carried a sample to Gong Su for his opinion; Gong Su nibbled and spat and shrugged.

“It is always safer to boil, first,” he said, and when brewed the tea had a peculiar but not unpleasant flavor; by the end of the day Hammond had drunk seven cups, and would certainly have been dead if it had possessed even the most mildly toxic character.

“It is quite miraculous,” he said that night. “Do you know, Captain, I have not been ill even once all the day: I feel myself as I have not since we left New South Wales, and I have been shipboard or dragon-back every day. I feel wonderfully clear-headed, indeed; I am willing to declare that it outstrips tea in flavor and in healthful effect, both.”

Their flight the next day brought them to a deep river valley that Churki called Urubamba, and from there they followed the river upstream through deep gorges. They were descending now, the highest mountains behind them, and more roads and villages scattered beneath their passage, until coming around a narrow pass within the river gorge they saw an immense bridge of rope, stretched from one peak to another.

It was heavily laden: three horsemen leading their beasts, and a train of some dozen llamas behind them, and a large party of men walking—or rather clinging to the sides. The bridge was swaying not only with ordinary use, but towards its destruction: the thick ropes were fraying, and even as they approached a piece of matting fell away towards the river, decomposing into its component sticks.

The horses were blindfold, to be led across more calmly, but they were already uneasy with danger; as they scented the dragons on the wind, they went mad with terror and began to rear and struggle against all handling. If there had earlier been any hope of the party’s clearing the span before all the structure came down, there was none now, and scarce moments to disaster.

Temeraire dived at once; the men on the bridge pointed at him and cried out, shouting, but he passed them and hovering bore up underneath the main portion of the bridge as best he could. “A little farther to port,” Laurence called to him, already unfastening his own harness-straps, “and if you will shift backwards, the weight will lie across your hindquarters. Roland, light along that spare harness, from below; we must get those horses hobbled before they fling themselves over.”

He pulled himself up onto the bridge ahead of the party, Forthing and Ferris scarcely a step behind, and they together managed to calm the lead horse, if calm were the word for it; they had nearly to bind it into immobility and bodily drag it, and as they hauled the snorting and terrified creature its saddle-girth burst. Saddle, blankets, harness, all fell away and jouncing off Temeraire’s hip-bone tumbled down the gorge and were flung from side to side in their descent, the stirrups clanging, until at last they vanished into the cataracts below.

Even with Temeraire supporting nearly all its length, the bridge felt alarmingly fragile: a motion not unlike the crow’s nest on a windy day, save it had not the solidity of aged oak underfoot and thrice-laid hawsers in arm’s reach. Laurence managed to draw the plunging horse along its length—a stallion, he noted with some irritation, and no wonder the beast could scarcely be managed—with Ferris lashing its hindquarters unmercifully, until at last it was got up onto the far bank and he left Forthing to secure it to a nearby tree.

He climbed cautiously back out upon the leaping bridge, and offered a hand to the man lying prostrate and clinging to the matting, white-faced; what use, if the bridge were to fall apart around him, Laurence did not see. “Get along, there,” he said, pushing him along the length, and turned to the second horse: but the poor animal’s frenzy had overcome it. In its mad kicking, it had put one leg clear through the matting, tearing its own flesh against the sticks, and even a glance showed there was no hope: blood pouring freely, and bone showing white from fetlock to hock.

The man at its bridle had seen as much; he drew a pistol from his waist and threw Laurence a swift unhappy look, found no reprieve in Laurence’s nod, and clapping the gun to the animal’s head put a period to its misery. “Temeraire,” Laurence called up, “can you take this carcass off?”

“Not very easily, I am afraid,” Temeraire said, craning his head about, “but I had a llama this morning: Kulingile, would you care for it?” he called: the other dragons had withdrawn to the far side of the gorge, and perched themselves where they could upon the bare stone.

“Arrêtez, arrêtez!” the handler said, pointing to the fallen animal’s belly, which Laurence only then saw was grossly distended with pregnancy; as they watched a tiny hoof might be seen pushing out from within as if in protest.

“What the devil does he want to do, cut it out in mid-air while we are all hanging fire?” Ferris said: he had clambered back out to Laurence’s side, and the bridge yet undulated beneath them like a blowing veil.

Kulingile came off the wall of the gorge and sweeping low took the dead horse off in one massive talon, and laid it in the same pass upon the far side; Demane slid down his shoulder and was by the side of the carcass in a moment, knife out, to slice open the belly. The handler looked long enough to see that Demane knew his work, then turned back to the last of the horses; with his assistance and that of the third horseman, they had the beasts off at last, and in the meantime the llama-train and their handlers had retreated to the other side of the gorge.

The little foal had been extracted from the body of its dam and was tottering feebly on stick legs; the handler had wiped it gently clean. “What does he mean to feed it?” Demane said, frowning, but the third animal, another mare, was not much less forward in pregnancy as well. Though she seemed justly perplexed to be applied to by a foal before having given birth, she did not make great objection, and shortly the small animal was suckling energetically enough to give hope of its survival.

“Mille fois merci,” the handler of the horses said, coming away from the nursing foal to seize and shake Laurence’s hand vigorously.

“De rien,” Laurence said, bowing politely, and then belatedly realized they were speaking French: and also that his hand was now all over blood. The horseman noticed as much in the same moment, and in some embarrassment left off his clasp.

“Do you mean to tell me,” Granby said, when Iskierka had landed—they were encamping for the night only a little way off from the men they had rescued—“that we have just been risking our necks to save a French baggage-train?”

“Yes,” Laurence said. “They are on their way to Cusco overland, following De Guignes: he and his embassy are certainly there already.”

“And a baggage-train of gifts, I have no doubt,” Hammond said, “meant for the Sapa Inca: those horses are breeding stock.” He spoke half-reproachfully, as though he blamed Laurence for having rescued the Frenchmen and their goods. “And here we look little more than beggars.”

“As we have none to give, sir,” Laurence said, “let us hope instead that the ruler of a mighty nation will not be so easily swayed by trinkets and gifts.”

“Let us hope that without them, we will be admitted into his presence at all,” Hammond said.

Chapter 11

CUSCO STOOD IN THE BOWL of a mountaintop, cupped round by jagged short peaks, green and mossy, and overlaid with a veil of clouds. The city from aloft had a curious and peculiarly deliberate shape: a lion in profile, its head an immense fortress of carven stones built upon a hill, and the city its great body, lying alongside the banks of a river and formed of many large houses of fine construction, many with deeply sloping roofs thrust high into the air, of thickly layered thatch. The buildings were established in groups around courtyards: in several of these dragons lay sleeping, in others sitting alert and watchful, all of them in an array of brilliant plumage and adorned in gold and silver, so a faint chiming might be heard even from aloft.

So far as Laurence could see, there were no hovels, not even smaller houses, and no sign of any market within the proper bounds of the city: these practicalities seemed to be constrained to villages that huddled around the city walls in clusters, along short and well-used roads.

Several dragons in the ensign of the patrol came winging to meet them, long before they had reached those walls: the patrol-beasts flew in rings around them peering at Temeraire’s safe-conduct, and exchanging a yammering conversation with Churki. They were at last escorted—whether as guests or prisoners was difficult to ascertain—towards an immense raised plaza, directly to the north of the river, plainly of ceremonial function and which would have admitted even a small army of dragons.

“We are to stay in the kallanka there to the side,” Churki informed Hammond, indicating a great covered hall alongside the plaza. “The other foreigners, they say, are on the other side—”

“The other foreigners?” Hammond said. “De Guignes is here, then?”

And as they landed, across the plaza Laurence could see Genevieve asleep beneath another covered hall, the Fleur-de-Nuit’s immense lamp-eyes lidded down to pale slits.

The patrol-dragons settled down around them as they landed, with an air of intending to remain; Churki held still more discussion with them, and at one moment turned and hissed something aside to Hammond, who started and then said to Laurence, “Pray, Captain, shall we let the men down? Churki is of the opinion that—that it cannot but convey our peaceful intentions, when they have seen us disembark—”

From his awkward looks, Laurence doubted whether Churki’s exact meaning had been translated, but Temeraire was distracted at the moment by low argument with Iskierka on the subject of the ornamentation of an immense temple visible a little to the southeast: “Laurence,” he said, swinging his head around, “do you think that can really be gold, there on the outside of that building? Surely no-one would put gold out where it might be rained upon, and dirtied.”

“You had better apply to Churki, for an answer which might have some authority behind it; it may be gold leaf only,” Laurence said, doubtful himself: certainly the frieze looked golden, but it seemed implausible. “Mr. Fer—Mr. Forthing, I think we will let down the men, if you please.”

The disembarkation of nearly two hundred men certainly had an effect: as the belly-netting was let down and the sailors gratefully spread out to stretch their legs, and set up a clamoring for beer, the patrol-dragons stretched out their necks to peer at them with interest and low murmurs of appreciation and, Laurence thought, perhaps of envy. In any case, they looked on Temeraire and Iskierka and Kulingile with a less suspicious eye.

“Yes,” Churki said, “now they begin to believe me, when I tell them you brought back one of my mother’s own stolen ones: they thought I must be mistaken somehow. And of course they are very impressed; you see, there is no reason for you to be distressed that the French are bringing horses and jewels; what is that, to what you have brought?”

Temeraire added to his translation, “I have no notion what she can mean; surely she sees we are quite destitute,” and asked her.

Churki shook her wings out, with a great jingling noise. “Why, all these men, of course.”

“Mr. Forthing,” Laurence said, as they began to lay out pallets and rig a few rough tents for more shelter against the cool mountain air, “you will post a watch of trusted men, and let there always be an officer on duty with them, if you please.” A guard which he meant for protection in all directions: Laurence was unpleasantly certain that Hammond would not have scrupled to exchange even two hundred men for any advantage he might gain thereby over the French, in establishing diplomatic relations with the Inca.

The letter, or khipu, had gone to the authorities; Churki also left them, to convey her assurances to a more significant representative. But the day wore away around them without an answer, and meanwhile across the plaza they saw the great French Grand Chevalier Piccolo make a landing accompanied by several Incan dragons who bore many slaughtered llamas in their talons, to share out as a repast with Genevieve.

“I would not mind a llama,” Kulingile said, watching intently. “Mayn’t we go hunting? It is getting late.”

But Hammond would not have any of them leave, before some authorization came; he was not without justice anxious should any of the dragons, flying alone, provoke a local beast to challenge their presence in the heart of the empire. He was still more adamant when Churki at last returned, to inform them that their messages had gone home, and some representative of the court would shortly come and see them: “We cannot fail to meet them in whatever state we can manage,” he said, and would have the dragons line themselves up, and arrange the men in ranks around them, dispersed in such a way as to suggest their numbers were even greater than they were.

“You might put on your robes now, Laurence,” Temeraire suggested, egged on by Hammond’s enthusiasm; Laurence could only with difficulty divert him to the task of assuring his own appearance: the talon-sheaths were brought out, and the breastplate polished, and under Roland’s guidance a party of the sailors were formed into a line to carry water from the great fountain at the center of the courtyard to the dragons, and pour it over their backs.

“For I cannot but agree with Mr. Hammond that we must present a respectable appearance, if we can,” Temeraire said defensively, when he had roared in a small way at a few of the sailors who had unwarily expressed objections to being put to this labor, “and I am sorry to say it, but for that we can only rely on Kulingile and Iskierka and myself: there is no denying we have a very strange look, as a party, with all that Curicuillor was kind enough to do for us in the article of clothing. You would not wish us to give this Incan nobleman a disgust of us, Laurence, surely; and are you certain you would not consider—”

Fortunately, before Temeraire could renew his efforts to push Laurence into the robes, Churki said, “There: he comes now, and look, it is a lord of the Sapa Inca’s own ayllu, himself; did I not promise, Hammond?”

Temeraire sat up sharply, arranging his wings against his back, looking around the empty courtyard as vainly as the rest of them; then he looked aloft and said, “Oh: not him again?” and drooped his wings, as Maila Yupanqui descended into the square before them.

“I do not see why you insist on being so unfriendly,” Iskierka said, and made rather a spectacle of herself in Temeraire’s opinion nodding to Maila, who simpered back at her even while he answered Hammond’s shouted inquiries.

“There is certainly some official who might meet with you, if you wish. Perhaps the political officer for Antisuyo: you wish to travel through the jungle, do you not, to this country of Brazil?”

“Yes—yes, of course,” Hammond said, darting a cautious glance at Laurence, “but naturally as I am here, as representative of His Majesty’s Government it is incumbent upon me—it would be inexcusable—not to make my bows to the Sapa Inca: to convey His Majesty’s affections and to bring greetings from the ruler of one great nation to another; and information regarding the present circumstances of the war in Europe—”

“Well, you are a man,” Maila said dismissively. “It is not yet clear to me such a meeting must be necessary. But,” he turned to Iskierka, “there is no reason you might not visit the court, and be presented: the Sapa Inca has heard of your victory in the arena of Talcahuano, and is most eager to see you: the great Manca Copacati has not been defeated in battle in twenty-three years, and all would know how it was done.”

Temeraire flattened his ruff in indignation: as though he would not have defeated the Copacati himself, without any difficulty; and as though he were not the senior dragon of their party—

“Of course I will come,” Iskierka said, preening in the most absurdly self-satisfied manner, “and meet the Sapa Inca, and I would be happy to explain how I won: it was a great battle, of course, and he was a very dangerous enemy, but that is nothing to me. Will we go at once?”

“But—” Hammond said, “but—”

“There is no reason to wait,” Maila said. “The court is meeting now: the Sapa Inca will be glad to see you, if you can come.”

“What are you doing?” Temeraire demanded. “Mr. Hammond, you surely cannot allow her to go and speak for England—”

“Whyever not!” Iskierka said. “If the Sapa Inca does not want to see you, most likely because you want to speak of tiresome things like trade, and politics, and everything dull, why should I not go instead; unless you mean for us all to sit here and watch the French go back and forth to the court.”

This argument, Temeraire was distressed to see, struck Hammond very forcefully: he said to Iskierka, “You must understand that you must in no wise represent yourself as speaking for His Majesty’s Government, without approving even your particular turns of phrase with me: and your first objective must of course in all things be to persuade the Sapa Inca to see me, as His Majesty’s representative—”

“Yes, yes,” Iskierka said, with a flip of her tail. “Pray lead on,” she added to Maila, who inclined his head and leapt aloft, while Temeraire stared after them in astonished betrayal that all the order of the world had so upended itself.

“She will not persuade the Sapa Inca to do any such thing,” he said stormily to Hammond, “she will not even try; she will only come back and lord it over us that she has been to the court and we have not: you must see that is perfectly clear. Oh! To send Iskierka on a diplomatic mission—one would think you had never met her, nor spent ten minutes in her company; I dare say she will lose her temper, and start a fresh war for us.”

“You speak as though I had made a deliberate choice,” Hammond answered, with some heat, “when I should be inexpressibly delighted to have any other avenue of communication available—any other intermediary but a dragon as ungovernable in temper as she is unconcerned with the good opinion of anyone; and the instant such should offer, I will seize upon it at once with the greatest satisfaction; on that you may rely.”

Granby was if anything less consolable than Temeraire. “Laurence,” he said, “if that lunatic beast of mine should go into a fit and insult the Emperor, or set fire to the palace—”

Laurence would have liked to reassure him with more honesty than platitudes; but he could not but share the liveliest alarm at any mission which should rest upon hopes of Iskierka’s good conduct. “You may comfort yourself,” he said at last, “that she comes to the court with a reputation which must inhibit any offhand insult from being given, having defeated a champion of so much note.”

“Unless some other beast takes it into his head to challenge her,” Granby said, “from revenge or ambition. Put someone on watch, would you? I will be on fire with anxiety until she comes back; and if anyone else comes near, let me know and I will go and hide until we know she hasn’t started a war.”

Kulingile only was content. Maila had granted them the liberty of the local herds, Demane had gone with Kulingile hunting, and they had brought back nine llamas, which already were roasting on spits under Gong Su’s supervision: there were extensive roasting-pits behind the hall, evidently intended for the purpose of feeding assembled crowds, and a great supply of llama dung for fuel. Laurence only hoped this profligate hunting would not invite reproach; but when Shipley called, “Captain, there are some fellows there, and I think they must be coming to us,” and they espied a small party of men approaching their encampment from across the plaza, Laurence felt they had entirely too many just causes to fear.

But when the men drew near enough to be recognized, De Guignes was in the lead, escorting on his arm Mrs. Pemberton, and he brought her to their camp with a smile at once polite and peculiarly forced, for all his usually impeccable courtesy. “I am delighted to see you all so well!” he said. “I will not pretend,” he bowed, “that I am not surprised: but I am filled with admiration for your ingenuity. You must tell me how it was managed, when there is leisure; and I trust that your sojourn was not so uncomfortable as to create any lasting spirit of resentment between us.”

Hammond’s expression conveyed without words that the spirit of resentment was alive and well; Laurence answered more politely for their party, and added, “And I am indebted to you, sir, for having given Mrs. Pemberton your protection: indeed, madam, I would ask on your behalf if he would extend that protection a little further, as we are not—”

“But of course—”

“Captain, if I might—”

“No, I thank you,” Mrs. Pemberton said very decisively, cutting short Laurence’s question and De Guignes’s immediate response, and Hammond’s own interjection as well. “I have felt my own lapse of duty most keenly, gentlemen; and while I hope Miss Roland will pardon my having deserted her so long—” Miss Roland’s expression made it abundantly clear she would more easily pardon the desertion than the reverse. “—I cannot allow it to continue.

“Thank you, M. De Guignes, for your generous hospitality, and pray give my thanks again to Mme. Récamier for her kindness, and the gift of the dress,” she added, holding him out her hand, marshaling somehow in the midst of an open plaza and surrounded on all sides by ragged soldiers all the authority of a chaperone thirty years older delivering a set-down in the midst of St. James.

De Guignes took his dismissal in reluctant part, outdone only by Emily Roland’s visibly truculent looks; but when he and his men had made a few more polite remarks, they at last retreated to their own distant encampment on the other side of the square, leaving Mrs. Pemberton to stand in place, incongruous in her neat gown and gloves and calm looks, until Laurence had arranged her a seat contrived from a coil of the belly-netting, with several of the local capelets thrown over it for upholstery.

De Guignes had brought her to Cusco with his party. “And regrets it now extremely, I should say,” she said, when she had seated herself. “He was not in the least enthusiastic about permitting me to rejoin you, and I believe if I had not witnessed your arrival directly with my own eyes, he would have been as glad to keep the intelligence from me as long as he might.”

“I should be sorry to imagine M. De Guignes would ever behave so little like a gentleman,” Laurence said, startled by her condemnation of one who, it seemed to him, had only intended to assure her comfort.

“Oh, I do not say a word against him, Captain, I assure you,” Mrs. Pemberton said. “He has let me go, after all, and one cannot really blame him for regret in the present circumstances; he scarcely can rely on my discretion.”

“Certainly not,” Hammond said with enthusiasm, “of course not; how should he expect that a subject of the King should keep his confidences, in any matter that concerned her own nation; madam, pray tell me: have the French been admitted to the presence of the Sapa Inca, themselves, or only their beasts?”

“Not all their party,” Mrs. Pemberton said, “but yes: they are at court every day—”

“Every day!” Hammond cried, dismayed. “Good Heavens: we must find a way to persuade them to let us in; Captain Granby, you must exert all your powers over Iskierka—you must convince her to promote an invitation—”

“Sir,” Mrs. Pemberton said, “I have been invited to come again tomorrow, myself; I would of course be happy to—”

“What? You have met him?” Hammond said. “How was it arranged, were—”

“Her, Mr. Hammond,” Mrs. Pemberton said.

“I beg your pardon?” Hammond said.

“The Sapa Inca is a woman,” Mrs. Pemberton said.

The Empress, Mrs. Pemberton was able to explain to them, was the widow of the previous lord, and the daughter of the one before him. “So far as I can tell,” she said, “he died of the pox. As she herself had by then already survived the illness, while he kept his sickbed she took on the role of intermediary and spoke for him to the court; and he seems to have taken an unconscionable deal of time dying. They have a most peculiar custom of preserving the dead here, instead of a proper burial, but I gather his remains are not fit to be seen, and have been sequestered away instead under a shroud.”

“Properly gruesome,” Granby said. “And when she couldn’t prop him up in a corner any longer?”

“By then, I gather,” Mrs. Pemberton said, “she had persuaded the chief dragons of the court that a woman was better suited to the role of empress: where it would be the duty of a man to go forth and lead the army, she might remain at home under their protection. The argument has carried a great deal of weight with them.”

Laurence asked, “Ma’am, how certain are you of this intelligence?”

“Perfectly certain,” she said. “I have had most of it from the Empress herself, or her handmaidens: she speaks French already, and has asked me to tutor her in English.”

The Frenchwomen whom they had seen aboard the Triomphe, it transpired, were here for no lesser purpose than to carry on negotiations with the Inca on De Guignes’s behalf. “And if possible to persuade her to see him, but so far they have in this respect been unsuccessful. I have been made a member of their party, and welcome to join them in their regular attendance at court, but I have not,” Mrs. Pemberton said, “been privy to all their conversations with the Sapa Inca: and the ladies are far too shrewd to allow their intentions to slip in mere gossiping. You can imagine better than I, sir, what terms they are likely to have offered and to seek.”

“An exchange,” Hammond said thoughtfully. “I should not be in the least surprised if they proposed an exchange—of people, I mean, for dragons; I am quite sure Napoleon would be delighted to receive a number of beasts in France at the price, I suppose, of the population of his prisons. But I am sure he would also settle for a mere vague agreement of friendship—a truce of sorts—he does not require an ally on this continent, when he is already delivering the Tswana here by the boatload.

“Perhaps they are here only to prevent our acquiring one—? Only,” he paused, and gnawed absently upon his thumb a moment, “only, would De Guignes come on so incidental a mission? And bind himself to a dragon for its sake? No—! Blast.”

He muttered to himself in this vein for several moments more; Mrs. Pemberton listened until he ran down again and had turned away from her to his teapot, for a fresh cup of the coca tea; then she said calmly, “I will see what I can find out in more earnest, sir; and present Miss Roland to Her Majesty tomorrow morning, with your permission.”

The steaming cup in his hand momentarily forgotten, Hammond looked up doubtfully at her and then at Emily Roland, who stared equally doubtful back.

“We cannot suffer by having another pair of eyes and ears admitted to the Sapa Inca’s presence,” Mrs. Pemberton pointed out. “Miss Roland and myself will extend whatever offers you might wish to Her Majesty, Mr. Hammond; and I am sure we should be glad to do our very best to accomplish whatever you would like.”

“What I would like,” Hammond said to Laurence several days later, nearly pulling upon his hair: all efforts at obtaining his admission to the Empress’s presence had failed, “what I would like, would be the liberty of carrying on my own negotiations, without recourse to intermediaries: untrained intermediaries! A violently quarrelsome dragon, a governess, and a fifteen-year-old girl! And I must credential them—I hope no-one in England may hear of it.”

“You may at least comfort yourself that the French can be only a little better prepared than are we, for the circumstances of such a negotiation,” Laurence said.

“Can they not?” Hammond said. “They at least have known what to expect—they have surely been sending spies over here through Brazil these last two years. We already know that Mme. Récamier is here on their part; I thought she loathed Bonaparte, but I suppose she loves an opportunity of intrigue on such a scale enough to compensate. And at least De Guignes’s beast has not taken it into her head to form a distaste for the foremost Incan dragon.”

Laurence could not dispute the justice of this last complaint: Temeraire and Maila Yupanqui were only just short of daggers-drawn with one another. There would have been every cause to despair of progress, indeed, if Maila were not more than ready to be pleased by the rest of them, most notably Iskierka, to whom he applied regularly for private conversation, on the excuse of continuing his efforts to acquire English.

“I am sure I do not see any reason why Iskierka must put up with being annoyed,” Temeraire said.

“I am sure I cannot name a single other advantage we have to hand,” Hammond said, “so you will oblige me by not interfering.”

So Temeraire remained resentful, and grew only more so when Iskierka landed shortly thereafter and announced, “I have been out flying with Maila: he has shown me a mine where they take gold directly out of the ground; cartloads of it; and he tells me they could take still more than they do, but they do not have so many hands as they need for the work, as it is only men who can do it properly.”

“Laurence, do you suppose there might be a mine of that sort in England?” Temeraire asked him in low tones, shortly after his scornful dismissal of Iskierka’s report had provoked them to a quarrel which left them sitting at opposite ends of the hall. “Or perhaps in our valley, in New South Wales?”

“I cannot think it at all likely,” Laurence said. “Gold mines are not a common occurrence; from what we saw on our journey across the Australian continent I should think the country might more likely have opal mines.”

“Oh!” Temeraire said. “Like those stones which they sewed to your robes? That would do splendidly; I would rather have opals than a like quantity of gold. Laurence, will you not wear your robes, perhaps to walk across the plaza, where you might be seen?”

Laurence only with difficulty made demur, on the grounds of the occasion lacking sufficient importance, but that afternoon Iskierka landed and announced triumphantly, “Well, I have arranged it all, as perfectly as any of you might possibly have wished: the Inca will see you, Granby!—oh, and you and Laurence may come as well, Temeraire, if you like.”

Temeraire was inclined to be indignant at this offhand invitation, but then he brightened and said to Laurence, “So you shall put the robes on, now; and I am sure the Inca will see at once that you are the senior officer of our expedition.”

“Pray be certain not to move towards her uninvited,” Hammond said anxiously. “Not without very plain invitation—and if possible, avoid any nearer approach at all, indeed—save, of course, if you should gather the impression such avoidance might give offense—”

“I don’t see why you oughtn’t go, instead of me,” Granby said. “I am no hand for diplomatic affairs; and if they still have their backs up over their quarrel with those Spaniards two centuries ago, surely they would rather have an ambassador than an officer.”

“Of course you must go,” Iskierka said, overruling all objection. “You are my captain; naturally she would like to meet you.”

“We cannot say—perhaps there is some particular favor in their society, some distinction, conferred upon military men—certainly their chief men are generals, and soldiers,” Hammond said. “We cannot take the risk; certainly we have been particularly favored to receive any invitation whatsoever—Mrs. Pemberton assures me De Guignes has had none, so far as she knows, and he must be quite wild about it. Captain Laurence, you do recall—no approach unless you are very clearly beckoned—”

“Yes,” Laurence said, grimly folding back the sleeves of his robes. “I recall.”

Their introduction took place at a hall which faced upon another great plaza called the Cusipata: Iskierka led them on proudly and descended at nearly the far end of the long courtyard so their approach might have the best effect, in defiance of Hammond’s advice. Under the roofed building, a great dais stood awaiting them: a stepped platform with a low stool set atop it, and enormous plates of gold affixed to every side all around.

Maila Yupanqui and three other great beasts were disposed about the dais in heavy coils, the burnished shine of the metal gleaming out only here and there between their bodies; they shifted in restless anxiety, and all their heads weaved in the air. Laurence might almost have called it an absurdity, to have four immense dragons watching himself and Granby with so much cold anxiety, and with not half so much attention on Iskierka and Temeraire; but the tense suggestion of waiting violence leached any quality of humor from the circumstances.

Two rows of guards stood also to either side of the dais, armed with swords and muskets—of Spanish or of Portuguese make, Laurence judged, and likely traded for at the coast, or from Brazil itself—and wearing a sort of armor made of thick wool; which might have been merely intended to add to the imperial state, but the atmosphere conveyed was not one of formality but of an armed camp, and the unfriendly looks bent upon them would have been merited more by assassins than by honored guests.

The Empress sat upon the stool on the dais: a tall and slender woman with incongruously broad shoulders, she wore a deep scarlet turban with feathers thrust into it, bound in gold, and her very long black hair hung down in plaits clasped with gold and emeralds; her garments were of wool of extraordinary fineness, splendidly woven in small patterned squares of bright colors, and ornamented with jewels. As they neared, Laurence saw she had also a scattering of pox-marks over one cheek, which had been brushed with gold dust and shone in the sunlight that spilled down from the ceiling in great shafts.

“Laurence, only look at the fountain,” Temeraire whispered: a great leaping construction, the basin all of solid gold catching sunlight, so the water as it leapt seemed to have caught fire; also carved and set with gems: and to either side of them the walls themselves were sheathed in gold.

Temeraire and Iskierka seated themselves in leonine fashion, though Maila and the other Inca dragons, six in number, remained on their haunches, and there was a tension in their limbs which suggested a readiness to spring. “We shan’t make a fuss about their behaving rudely,” Temeraire said to Laurence, in what was likely intended to have been a whispered aside, “because they are so very nervous; but pray do not be the least worried, Laurence, for if they should attack us I shall certainly not allow any harm to come to you; if I had the least doubt on that subject we should not have come.”

Laurence sighed: there was a firm insistence on this final point which he did not think boded well for Temeraire’s complacency, in future, when duty should compel him into danger. He halted where they stood and bowed to the Inca, who looked at them with a thoughtful expression: not a particularly handsome woman, and made less so by the scarring, but her eyes were exceptionally dark, and a shrewd calculation looked out of them.

“I am Anahuarque Inca, and I welcome you to Pusantinsuyo,” the Empress said, in English only lightly accented, and then changed to surprisingly excellent French to invite them to be comfortable; woven cloths, thickly padded, were brought and laid out on the floor for them to sit upon.

“At least that makes it plain enough how near to approach,” Granby muttered to Laurence, very gingerly lowering himself onto one of the blankets; and then started: the Empress rose from her throne and descended to the floor of the hall, and even as her warriors and her dragons stirred uneasily, she seated herself on another woven cloth not five paces distant.

“Are you comfortable?” she asked, looking at him with an attitude of curiosity. “This is the custom of your people: to sit while you talk?”

“Oh, er,” Granby said. “Well—thank you, yes, most comfortable—”

“And the conditions of your journey? The roads were in good repair, and the storehouses full?” she inquired.

Granby threw Laurence a desperate look, but she was too clearly addressing him directly. “Yes, ma’am—Your Majesty?”

He would gladly have stopped there, but Iskierka put down her head and nudged him, hissing, “Say something more, Granby: why are you being so stupid? She will think you are not clever.”

“I am not in the least clever, in conversation, and less so in French!” Granby answered her with some heat, and groped about feebly for something to say. “The storehouses are remarkable, Your Majesty,” he added. “We scarcely had to hunt along the way—oh, hell,” he said, reverting to English and muttering to Laurence, “ought we admit to taking from them all along the route?”

“I am glad to hear it,” Anahuarque said, however, without any sign of objecting to their pillaging. “The harvest has been good in the south, so I hear; I believe you have said it was so, Ninan?”

She repeated this question, directed to one of the hovering warriors, in Quechua: the gentleman in question, a tall and fiercely glaring young man, whose hand rested on the butt of a pistol thrust into a sash at his waist, started and answered her after a moment. She turned back to French and asked Granby about his satisfaction with their quarters; then discussed the weather and the approaching change of season, in each case weaving her own attendant men into the conversation.

Laurence, who had been used from childhood to hang his head from the banister overlooking his mother’s political dinners, even before he had been old enough to join the table, realized in short order there was no accident in the seeming banality of the conversation, but rather a masterful degree of management. He might have blamed it on Anahuarque’s being hampered by speaking as she did in a tongue other than her own, but this would have more naturally led to stammering and pauses; of which there were none.

As the conversation continued, and poor Granby bore the brunt of it, Laurence looked closer and saw the warriors around her throne were plainly not mere guards. Several of them were older men, others visibly battle-hardened; and all of them adorned both with large disks of gold embedded in their ear-lobes, and woven and fringed turbans which he began to think denoted perhaps nobility, or military rank. And the suspicious looks these men cast were not confined to Granby and to Laurence: they scowled at one another with equal fervor.

“She is playing Penelope’s game, I think,” Laurence said to Granby, when they had at last been dismissed the Empress’s presence and landed at the hall again. “She is being pressed to take a consort, who surely would seek to assert his authority direct; and she is playing her rivals off one against another.”

“And we are as good as a circus for distraction,” Granby said. “She can’t have had the least wish to speak to us for any other reason, when all she did was ask me about the weather in England, and I can scarcely tell you if it is summer or winter there at present. Laurence, she will keep us all here dancing attendance endlessly, along with the rest of those fellows, if only we give her a chance.”

“Yes,” Laurence said, and added to Hammond, who had been waiting to meet them, “but I think we can at least give you this assurance, sir: I do not think she can intend any serious alliance with France, at least not one which would engage her to commit any portion of her forces. She cannot afford to raise one of those men above the others; if she makes a great general, or allows any one of them to build repute as the foremost warrior of her realm, she at once puts herself in that man’s power.”

“Unless,” Hammond said bitterly, “she puts into place a counterbalance,” beckoning them inside the inner chamber.

“What do you mean?” Laurence said. “Have you heard something?”

This last was addressed to Emily Roland who yet wore the gown which Mrs. Pemberton insisted upon, for their visits to the women’s court, so they had come straight from there: Roland would otherwise have immediately cast it off for her uniform. Mrs. Pemberton stood in the corner of the room chafing her hands over the small brazier of coals, almost wringing them in an uncharacteristic betrayal of anxiety.

“Yes, sir,” Roland said. “The Empress wasn’t at court this afternoon, for she was meeting you, and so none of us had anything to do but sit and watch her ladies weave; and then that French lady, Mme. Récamier, blabbed a bit to one of the others: ‘Yes, poor Josephine; but not quite so poor as she was: she has got Fontainebleu, and not him.’ ”

“What?” Granby said. “What the devil does that mean?”

“It means, Captain, that Napoleon has divorced Josephine at last,” Mrs. Pemberton said. “He is at liberty to wed.”

Chapter 12

“IT IS NOT REASONABLE,” Temeraire said to Iskierka, “that Napoleon should also try to become Emperor of the Incas; one would think he might be satisfied with France, not to mention Italy and Prussia and Spain, and all the other places which he has conquered. It is quite outrageous; and I suppose that fellow Maila has been encouraging them, or else they should never have come here with him: I hope you do not think so much of him now.”

But Iskierka refused to acknowledge the very dire situation, and was only quite dismissive. “I am sure the Inca is not going to marry Napoleon; why would anyone marry Napoleon, when we are going to beat him? You do not need to worry. Although,” she added, “you all have made a great muddle of the negotiations. It is just as well that I am here. I am sure the Inca would not have had anything to say to any of us, otherwise.”

“She is quite absurdly partial, only because Maila is so very impressed that she fights so well, and can breathe fire,” Temeraire said to Laurence, “which is ridiculous in itself: they have fire-breathers here also.”

“Rather small creatures, from what we have seen; and with limited range, my dear,” Laurence said. Temeraire sniffed; he did not see why that should alone make so great a difference.

“If she should have any intelligence to suggest the Inca will not marry Napoleon—” Hammond began. “If, perhaps, Maila might have conveyed privately—” He glanced at Laurence and added hurriedly, “Not to suggest she should violate a true confidence, but any suggestion—any cause to believe—she would need only hint—”

“I am quite certain she has no such thing,” Temeraire said, and stalked away to the courtyard and went aloft to go and take a couple of vicuña for dinner; when he had brought them back, however, Gong Su was already occupied: Maila had sent over a brace of pigs—real pigs, which had been acquired from trade with the colonial nations—as a gift; and Iskierka was sitting in the courtyard watching Gong Su roast them on spits, with an expression that one could only call smug.

“No, thank you,” Temeraire said coldly, when he was offered a portion.

“I will take them, then, if you don’t mean to eat them,” Kulingile put in.

“You may do whatever you like,” Temeraire said. “I will wait for my own catch to be ready, if you will be so kind, Gong Su; that pork does not look particularly fresh, to me.”

“It eats excellently,” Kulingile said, crunching through a rib cage; Temeraire settled himself upwind of the smell of roasted pork, and ignored the general feasting.

“I hope,” Hammond said, “I hope, Captain Laurence, that we will not have any trouble. Any open quarrel must be dreadfully prejudicial to our cause. Churki has assured me that in a challenge, even victory on Temeraire’s part—which we must of course hope for if matters should come to such a pass—would scarcely leave us the better off than an ignominious defeat: Maila is not merely respected, but considered the guardian of the royal house, and any injury even to his pride would be widely resented.”

Laurence looked soberly out at the courtyard: Maila had come again, and was speaking with Iskierka at the far end too quietly to overhear, their heads intimate and conspiratorial; and Temeraire was sitting nearer their hall with his head raised haughtily, hearing Sipho recite some poetry to him. Or at least pretending to do so: his head was tilted ever so slightly at an angle calculated to give him the best chance of overhearing the distant conversation, and when Sipho paused for a question it was several moments before Temeraire looked down and replied.

“I cannot easily answer you, Mr. Hammond,” Laurence said. “I should not have said that Temeraire’s affections were engaged in such a way as to enable Iskierka to cause him pain; even now I must believe that it is his pride which is wounded, more than his heart.”

“The cause matters very little,” Hammond said, “if it should lead to the same end; the question is only whether you can restrain him; for I must call it increasingly evident that restraint will be called for.”

Laurence disliked that he was not sure of his power to do so, and disliked still more discussing the subject with Hammond; he excused himself and stepped outside, to join Granby in his usual haunt of late: sitting in what might have been a casual manner upon the roof of the hall, which offered him an excellent vantage point over the city: as dragons came and went, he sketched them and made note of their points in a crabbed and awkward hand which contrasted peculiarly with the precision and clean lines of his sketchwork. His left arm was at last out of its sling, though it still gave him some pain; but he could now rest it atop the sketchbook to keep it in place for his work.

“I have two new catches so far to-day,” Granby said, showing Laurence the results: one middle-weight beast marked as being all over yellow with green eyes, and a small, bright-eyed creature with a wingspan twice its length, which according to his notes could play the flute. “What? Oh—that says, fly backwards,” Granby said, when Laurence asked a translation. “I have never quite seen the like: she pulled up mid-air and went back on herself as easy as winking. That makes twenty-six distinct breeds,” he added, “and I have seen another half-a-dozen new beasts come and go, also.”

They looked back at the courtyard, where Iskierka and Maila continued their tête-à-tête, and Temeraire his sulk. “I do not suppose, John, that you have any notion how seriously Iskierka has engaged herself with Maila?” Laurence asked him.

“No; and I wonder at it, for ordinarily she will brag of anything and everything to me, at all hours of the day,” Granby said. “I will try and get it out of her, if you like; but don’t let Hammond fret you to pieces. There shan’t be any fighting over her, much though she would like. She has been chasing Temeraire for a year and ten thousand miles or thereabouts without much luck; I expect she is only trying to annoy him into it, instead, and sees this fellow as a handy way to do it.

“You might try and persuade him instead,” he added. “I don’t mind saying it would be a great thing for the Corps, if we could get an egg out of the two of them.”

Laurence demurred at doing any such thing: if he could recognize the desirability of the mating, he felt still more strongly the very great officiousness of interference in such a matter; and even if Temeraire’s attitude towards the proposals of England’s breeders had at first been less outraged than flattered, he had lately been given a disgust for the business through excessive solicitation. “And in any case, if Temeraire should apply to her, at present, and find himself rejected—whether for Maila’s sake or as mere stratagem on Iskierka’s part—it cannot ameliorate the situation; indeed it must provoke a still more passionate feeling on his part, as regards setting himself against Maila.”

“Well, I don’t count on her doing any such thing,” Granby said, “if only he gave her a little encouragement; but I will have a word with her, and see what she is about; not,” he added resignedly, “that I expect to be able to persuade her to do anything differently, if she is determined to go on playing cat-among-the-pigeons, but at least you can whisper a word in Temeraire’s ear, and maybe that will settle him down.”

He stood to call to her; but before he could do so Iskierka had gone aloft again with Maila, and Temeraire had abandoned his fiction of disinterest and looked after them with his ruff alarmingly wide.

“If I may say so, Captain, I would rather propose a cooling draught,” Gong Su said to Laurence, who had approached him to prepare a consolatory dinner of some unusual style, to divert Temeraire’s attention. “The local peppers are excellent, but not to be recommended in the present circumstances. I am afraid her excess of yang makes Iskierka a difficult companion for Temeraire, from time to time,” he added, with delicacy.

“I see he is tolerably transparent,” Laurence said.

“If you will permit me,” Gong Su said, “I will see if I can invite his attention into a more calming direction,” and he shortly enlisted Temeraire’s aid in fetching a great block of ice, cut from the peaks which overlooked the city, and then a bar of iron. This Temeraire and Kulingile laid upon the ice block and drew along its surface to shave a great heap of soft ice into a waiting trough; meanwhile Gong Su had prepared a syrup of some kind in his great cauldron. When he judged the ice sufficient and the alarmingly green concoction had cooled, he directed the dragons to pour it over the shaved ice.

“Oh!” Temeraire said, lifting his snout out of the resulting heap, “oh, it is splendid beyond anything, Gong Su; I might eat it forever.” Kulingile did not interrupt his own ecstatic consumption long enough to compliment the receipt; but when he had finished he settled back on his haunches and sighed with wordless delight.

“I am afraid we could not reserve any of it,” Temeraire informed Iskierka, with an air of smugness, when she returned that afternoon from yet another excursion, “for of course the ice would not stay; it is a pity you could not have any.”

“I will have it sometime, I expect,” Iskierka said, dismissively.

“All right,” Granby said to Laurence, “I am going to have it out with her. I should not have thought it out of the ordinary if she had snatched Gong Su and stormed off to fetch more ice at once, even if she were only gone for pleasure; and if she did mean to be prodding Temeraire, she would be mad as fire to-day.”

“I do not care about a sweet; I am concerned with much more important matters,” Iskierka said, when Granby had asked her. “As,” she added, with a sidelong look at Temeraire, “it seems to me others ought to have been; I have not neglected our mission, and meanwhile you are all doing nothing but wringing your hands, or making some treat, selfishly.”

“Oh!” Temeraire said, “as though you were really negotiating anything, when you are only busy making up to Maila—”

“I have been carrying out our mission!” Iskierka said. “The Empress only wished to see Granby because of me; if it were up to you, I dare say she would marry Napoleon. Maila has told me she thought of it, and the French have made her a great many promises.”

“What? And you have not said a word, all this while—!” Hammond said. “Do you know anything of their offers? Would their marriage give him in any way charge of their army in some fashion—of the aerial forces? But surely she must go to France, if she accepts him—would she install some governor—”

“No, no! I would have told you, if it was of any concern, but you may stop fretting; she will not marry him at all,” Iskierka said, and jetted some steam, smugly. “She will marry Granby.”

“What?” Hammond said.

“What?” Granby said.

The only ones at all pleased with the situation were Iskierka, and Hammond, who once past the initial shock urged them to take no hasty measures. “After all, we must have some alternative to offer them,” he said. “If the Sapa Inca indeed is willing to consider—”

“Damn you, Hammond,” Granby said, “don’t you see Iskierka must have lied her tongue black to bring this about? You don’t suppose the Incan Empress wants to marry a serving-officer, or that her people would let her, if they knew; she is not proposing some little fiction like you arranged in China, which everyone can forget as soon as the ink is dry on the paper.”

“We know nothing of the proposal, or what obligations have been assumed on our behalf,” Hammond said in placating tones, putting a hand upon Granby’s arm earnestly, “and just so we must go carefully until we do understand, or risk giving offense. I hope,” he added, “I am sure, Captain Granby, that my knowledge of your character is not mistaken: you would not refuse to undertake any singular duty, for your country, which only you could perform—”

“Laurence,” Granby said, calm with horror after Hammond had eeled off with some excuse, “that damned diplomat and my thrice-damned dragon are going to marry me off to an Empress if they can do it: they are both run mad.”

Laurence hardly knew what to say; with all Iskierka’s assurances he hardly believed it could be possible, until Temeraire landed in the courtyard, bursting with fresh indignation. “For I have spoken with Churki,” he said, “who has spoken to the other courtiers; and she says it is all a-hum: the Inca has not promised to marry Granby at all.”

“Oh, thank Heaven,” Granby said.

“She is only considering it,” Temeraire went on, “and—”

“The devil she is!” Granby said. “What has Iskierka told them, about me? Does Her Majesty know I am the third son of a Newcastle coal-merchant? What is she thinking—”

“Oh! The Inca does not care for any of that, at all, Granby,” Temeraire said. “She is thinking that if she marries you, Iskierka will have eggs for them, and the next Sapa Inca will have a great dragon who breathes fire: that is what she has promised.”

Which to Granby’s dismay rendered the arrangement more plausible by far: Britain itself had all but emptied the treasury to purchase Iskierka in the egg, and a nation so dependent on aerial power to preserve its sovereignty against the hunger of its neighbors would surely crave even more a fire-breather on such a scale. Though there were some native beasts which possessed the ability, they were small and their flames of a different variety altogether: low and coming only in short bursts, burning cool red and fading quickly; their value was more domestic than military, save as a distraction and a weapon in close quarters.

“You needn’t be dog-in-the-manger, either,” Iskierka said to Temeraire, when they confronted her. “I have said I will have an egg by you; and I will, too, but first I will have one by Maila: and I am sure you haven’t the least right to be jealous, when you have been shy all these months, all because you are afraid you cannot.”

“I am not jealous, and I am especially not afraid; I do not want to have an egg by you,” Temeraire said, “in the least.”

“That is nonsense,” Iskierka said, “why wouldn’t you? And Granby will be an emperor,” she added, and jetted so much steam in her delight that with the sunlight reflected off the wall-panels of gold, she was wreathed in a wholly undeserved gauzy halo of light.

“This certainly alters the complexion of the situation,” Hammond said thoughtfully, when informed. “I confess I had been concerned regarding what obligations she might have established—what promises might have been made—but if we are quite certain she has so far committed only herself, in her person—”

“And me,” Granby said, sharply.

“Yes, of course,” Hammond said, with a look which said plainly he did not care two pins for that.

Further inquiry determined that Iskierka’s promises had not been quite so scanty as that: she had airily assured Maila of the British gladly sending tens of thousands of men to repopulate the ayllus of many an Incan dragon; with vague hints that the sailors daily on display in the courtyard might themselves be delivered to the dragons of the court. But in doing so she had offered nothing to which Hammond greatly objected; indeed, Laurence thought Hammond would gladly have put the men up on a chopping-block and auctioned them off to the highest bidder.

“Of course their feelings must be consulted in the matter, Captain, but if there are men who wish to make their home in such luxurious circumstances,” Hammond said, “—who wish to serve their country in such a fashion—I can see no real objection. In any case,” he added hastily, “that, I think, is not truly the appeal of Iskierka’s proposal: you see, Captain Laurence, you were correct. For all her delay, the Empress must marry, and if she were to marry Napoleon, she must go to France: a nation torn by revolution and in the midst of war. I think the consideration must weigh with the dragons of her court greatly.”

“Which is as much to say,” Granby said, “that if she marries me, she shan’t be going anywhere; and I am meant to live out my days knocking around a palace. You might ask, Hammond, or at least make a pretense of it.”

“Captain Granby, I beg you do not refine on what we must as yet consider a most remote possibility,” Hammond said, beginning to sidle out of the hall in what could not be called a subtle manner. “Pray excuse me: I will just have a word with Iskierka—” and was gone.

“I think we must soon wish you happy,” Laurence said dryly to Granby, who stood flushed with choler, “with such enthusiastic matchmakers taking your part.”

“There, Captain Granby, sir,” O’Dea said in comforting tones, from where he had been sitting by the communal fire enjoying a tot of rum and very likely some eavesdropping, “sure and there is no harm in marriage, after all: though it all must end in a vale of tears, there’s naught better to be looked for in the ash of this sad and worldly life: why not.”

“Damn your impudence, O’Dea,” Granby said. “Whatever do you know of it?”

“Why, and I’ve buried four wives,” O’Dea said, and raised his glass in the air. “Katherine, Felidia, Willis, and Kate: the loveliest women ever to grace the earth, for to take pity on an old wretch like myself, and may the Good Lord be looking after them even now in his marble halls among the saints; although true enough there’s no certainty of salvation.”

He drained his tot and wheedling the other men at the fire said, “Come, lads: give me another drop if any of you have it to spare, a man needs a little heart in him when he thinks on love long gone.”

“Then there’s enough heart in you to dwell on the wreck of Rome,” Granby said, and stalked away.

That night Granby came to Laurence’s chamber, and knocking quietly asked him to go out. They went together through the courtyard and ascended the terraces that mounted up the hillside, silently; at the summit they looked down upon the broad plaza circled by the blue-gas lamps, and the orange glow of firelight out of the windows of the hall. “I suppose I am a fool; it didn’t occur to me at first any of it could really be true—still less that Hammond could really mean it to happen, and now—” Granby stopped.

“I scarcely know how to counsel you,” Laurence said, troubled; he had been no less reluctant to make himself over to be a pawn in Hammond’s negotiations in China, even if they had ended greatly to his advantage; and the present arrangement should mean a far greater upheaval for Granby.

“It’s worse than that,” Granby said. “Laurence, I can’t marry her. I know I ought to have spoken at once, and not left it so late; but there—it would scarce have made much of a difference, when Iskierka has kept the whole matter under her wing so long to begin with. Anyway, I couldn’t—cannot—tell Hammond. I won’t trust him so; but if I don’t tell him, I don’t know how to—what to—” He cut off the uncharacteristic stammer, and ran his hand down over his jaw, pulling it long and frustrate.

Laurence stared. “Are you already married?” he said, doubtfully.

“Oh! Lord, if only I were,” Granby said. “My sister wanted to settle one of her friends upon me; if only I had let her arrange it! Not even Hammond could ask me to become a bigamist, I suppose. No, Laurence—I—I am an invert.”

“What?” Laurence said, taken aback—the practice was scarcely unknown to him, coming from the Navy; he had known several fine officers addicted to the crime, their failing common knowledge and quietly ignored; but he had always understood it to stem from the lack of opportunity of a more natural congress, which could not be said to be the case for an aviator.

“Well, I don’t know what the cause of it is, but it hasn’t anything to do with opportunity; for me, anyway,” Granby said shortly, and they fell silent.

Laurence did not know what to say. He had never suspected Granby of being even ordinarily unchaste; and belatedly realized that in itself was evidence. “I am very sorry,” he said, after a moment. “—very sorry, indeed,” feeling the expression inadequate to the confession.

“Oh—” Granby shrugged, with one shoulder, “in the ordinary course of things, you know, it scarcely makes a difference. I have never seen the use for an aviator of battening on some girl who like as not cannot say boo to a dragon, and leaving her to sit in an empty house eleven months in twelve for the rest of her life, while you live in a covert with your beast. And for that matter, I had as soon have a little quiet discretion with another officer, as make my way in the ha’penny whorehouses outside the coverts like other fellows do.” He jerked a hand, as if to fling away the notion. “But now—this lunacy—”

“Ah,” Laurence said, braced himself, and asked, “Can you not?” steeling himself against the indelicacy of the question; but after all, on the Navy side he knew of at least Captain Farraway: eleven children, one for every home leave since his marriage, and his pattern-card wife unlikely to have strayed at all much less in so precise a fashion; so plainly it was not impossible as a matter of course—

“I can manage that if I must, I expect,” Granby said. “I would have to try and put myself out to stud to provide for Iskierka soon enough anyway. But once or twice is not the same thing as marriage. She must resent it; the Inca, I mean, and why shan’t she say ‘off with his head’ if she don’t like it?”

“If she should not learn—?” Laurence offered. “Not that I would counsel you to dishonesty,” he added, “but if it is no barrier to your duty to her—”

“It won’t do,” Granby said, bluntly. “Not that I would make a cake of myself, any more than I ever have, but I don’t undertake to be a monk the rest of my days, either. I would try and be discreet; but it is more than I expect that no-one should find out and blab to her: I shouldn’t be just some aviator, that no-one cares about, but the husband of their queen.”

Laurence said slowly, “And yet—she cannot be looking for affection of the ordinary sort which one might hope to find in marriage. For that matter, she must know soon enough if not already that Napoleon has divorced another woman for her, one whom he married for passion; and she herself is a recent widow. Her marriage must be an act of state, rather than a personal gesture; I cannot think she would take it as an injury in the same manner as might a woman entering into the marriage contract under the more ordinary circumstances.”

“Laurence,” Granby cried, with a look of reproach, “I should not have said a word to you of any of this, if I had been set on fire and dragged by wild horses, except that I hadn’t the least notion how to get out of the thing without help; and now you are as much as telling me you think I ought to go through with it.”

Laurence, sorry, said, “I would say, rather, that I do not know how to advise you,” but in truth, he could not claim Granby’s confession had successfully overcome his uncomfortable consciousness of the advantages of the match—or more to the point the deadly disadvantages of the alternative. It only increased in great measure the pitiability of Granby’s situation, without making Laurence able to feel in earnest that it was not Granby’s duty to allow the arrangement to go forward, if it might be achieved. “This alone does not seem to me a greater bar to your marriage than must be all the other obstacles: the difference in your station, and the uncertainty of the local politics; the ruin which it must make of your career—”

Here Laurence trailed off: for he himself had ruined his career, to carry out what he felt his duty; and Granby, who had looked away, knew it: Laurence’s own actions spoke too loudly of the choice he himself would make.

“It is not, of course, your duty,” Laurence said.

“I beg you consider whether it is not your duty,” Hammond said, when they had come back into the hall: he had been lying in wait for them, or very nearly, at the door. “Of course there is no question of imposing the match upon you unwilling,” he added, “none at all—”

If this were true on Hammond’s part, a large assumption, it was certainly not true on Iskierka’s; she dismissed Granby’s protests one and all, even the last desperate attempt, when he corralled her in private, out of earshot of everyone else but Laurence. “Of course I know that you are not fond of women, in that way,” she said. “I am not stupid; I know that you and Captain Little were—”

“Oh, for the Lord’s sake, will you not be quiet,” Granby cried, scarlet, and looked sidelong at Laurence in misery.

“Well, why did you speak of it, then?” Iskierka said reasonably. “I did not raise the subject: Immortalis told me we mustn’t do so, although I don’t see why; it is not as though I would allow anyone to arrest you, no matter what. But here it cannot signify—Anahuarque does not want you to be in love with her, only to make eggs, and be Emperor. I will ask Maila if you like, to be sure there will be no difficulty about it, but there shan’t be.”

Granby made plain to her that he did not like, in the least; but between her relentless determination and Hammond’s coaxing, he was chivvied along in a manner which could only inspire sympathy, rather as watching a stag harried by a pack of hungry wolves. He was at length persuaded into allowing himself to be formally presented to the Empress as a suitor, in a ceremony of Maila and Iskierka’s joint devising.

“Which, Captain Granby, if it achieve no other good, Maila tells us will induce them to allow me into her presence,” Hammond said, “which must at least advance my ability to negotiate to our advantage—”

“And to my disadvantage,” Granby said to Laurence, with more grim resignation than real protest; and he said, “I don’t suppose any of us have a clean neckcloth between us? I must at least try and not look like a scarecrow, I guess.”

Temeraire could not feel that Laurence had taken a proper view of the situation. While of course no-one could like the Sapa Inca to marry Napoleon, it seemed to him quite unreasonable that poor Granby should be sacrificed to avert it, especially as he disliked it so. Someone else might marry the Empress, since after all she did not care and only wished for fire-breathing eggs from Iskierka, in what anyone of sense would call a great lack of judgment. Iskierka might stay with Maila, since she liked to—no-one very much wanted her, anyway—and Granby might rejoin Temeraire’s own crew.

He had hinted at the idea to Granby—not in a direct way, for Iskierka was sure to be unreasonable about it, and after all Temeraire did not mean to be rude—or to behave as though he wished to steal Granby; he did not. Only it seemed hard that Iskierka should be permitted to take Granby away from Temeraire in the first place, and make him wretched, and keep him forever in this far-away country, however much gold they did seem to have lying about everywhere.

But despite the gold, Granby had indeed said dismally, “I would give a great deal this moment to still be a first lieutenant, and nothing to worry about except whether I should ever get my hands upon an egg: what my mother will say when she hears of this, I don’t like to think.”

Which response, Temeraire felt, quite justified pursuing his notion of an alternative. “I suppose you would like to stay here, and marry the Sapa Inca, and be an Emperor?” he inquired of Forthing, experimentally.

“Catch me,” Forthing said, snorting.

Temeraire sighed; he would have been just as happy to leave Forthing behind, as not. But he had to admit it would not be a reasonable exchange. Indeed, he had been forced twice this week to check Forthing pretty sharply: he had gone far overboard, in his attempts to prepare for this absurd and unnecessary ceremony of presentation.

“The Empress has not thought anything wrong in Granby’s clothing so far,” Temeraire said, “and if his boots are worn-out, he has those sandals, so I am sure you need not go to such lengths and spend so much leather on making new ones.

“And neither do you,” he added reproachfully to Ferris: who had just returned from the market at the outskirts of the city, with two alpacas laden with beautifully woven green cloth: he evidently thought to use this to make new coats for all the aviators who should be participating in the ceremony. “Where have the funds come, for all of this? For we have had none, before now.”

“Oh—well—” Ferris said, evasively, “—there are those stones, which Maila gave Iskierka.”

“She has not traded them for your getting ordinary cloth,” Temeraire said, with increasing suspicion, and swung his head around to count the sailors where they lay in the courtyard drowsing: he was sorry to say it, but he did not entirely put it past either Forthing or even Ferris to have allowed one of the men to sneak away to another dragon, in exchange for more bribery; a practice which Temeraire did not mean to continue. Laurence disapproved, for one thing, and aside from that, while the sailors were not very good, and he did not consider them his crew, exactly, certainly he was responsible for them.

He saw now that it must be a very poor sort of dragon who would only concern himself with one person; of course Laurence outweighed in importance all the rest; and his officers and crew after, when he had got a ground crew again; but that did not need to be the limit. Temeraire saw no reason he might not undertake to look after more men than he could carry at one time, if Curicuillor and her offspring did as much; and indeed one might say that Temeraire’s own uncle was responsible for all China, in a way, as he was the Emperor’s dragon.

In any case, Laurence had been working on the crew’s discipline, and they were rather better, especially now that Handes was gone: they grumbled a little, but did their work, and when Ferris had put them to the new supply of fabric, they even proved able to turn out perfectly serviceable coats, after one remaining threadbare garment had been sacrificed to make pattern-pieces from. So Temeraire did not mean to let them be traded away, particularly in such a cause; and he kept a close and watchful eye on all of them.

“And one of them is missing,” he said wrathfully, the next morning, “Crickton, and where has he gone, I should like to know at once, pray,” and it transpired that Crickton had grown enamored of a serving-girl who lived in the estate of the governor of the eastern province.

“He hasn’t gone,” Ferris said to Laurence, hurriedly, when Temeraire had called him to account, “he is only visiting her, for a little while; I didn’t think there could be any harm in it.”

“Oh?” Laurence said, grimly.

“Well,” Ferris said, “it is hard on the fellows, when there are no ladies on the town, as it were; and I gather, sir, it is hard on the women hereabouts, also, for they cannot get married outside their own ayllu without a great deal of trouble, in negotiations—”

Crickton had evidently been trying several nights to sneak away, to visit the lady—on the basis of little more encouragement than smiles, from the doorway of the great hall where she lived—and had been caught in the act by Ferris. “And I represented to him, sir, that it could not be his duty to go away in such a manner; he proposed that he should only have a visit with her, and return; and the steward of the estate thought fit to send us a thank-you—”

“For his providing stud services,” Laurence said flatly, and Ferris looked at first abashed, and then shrugged wide.

“It is not as though we don’t ourselves, sir,” he said. “If one has a dragon, I mean.”

Laurence looked rather troubled, and later said to Temeraire, “My dear, I hope you do not wish for me to—that is to say, I cannot feel—barring marriage, I should not be prepared to—”

“Pray do not think of it, Laurence,” Temeraire said at once, reassuringly: he understood exactly Laurence’s concerns. “I should never demand that you marry where you do not like, only to be an Emperor; and as for children, I had much rather have a properly trained crew. Anyway,” he added, “perhaps Admiral Roland will have some for you, since Emily must go to Excidium; now that I think of it I cannot feel it quite fair that I must give her up with no return, just when she is all trained up and ready to be a splendid officer.”

Laurence did not seem entirely consoled by their conversation on the subject; and Crickton was allowed to remain with his paramour, for no good reason: Temeraire would have been quite happy to send back the cloth, and fetch Crickton back; and if the steward had objected, he was thoroughly in a mood to defend his rights. But while barring any further such arrangements, Laurence would not reverse this present one, as the cloth had already been cut; so the coats were made.

And then Forthing did not wish to be outdone—although why he should object when the final aim was so little to be desired, Temeraire did not see—and Shipley was very ready to please an officer by setting the sailors to sewing up the scraps into a few additional garments. Forthing had steadily applied himself to learning the language—Temeraire now bitterly regretted offering any tutelage on the subject—and somehow managed to exchange these in the market for a very handsome length of red woolen cloth, which was made up into a cloak for Granby. Forthing even had the temerity to propose that some of the opals from Laurence’s robes should be transferred to make an ornamental border upon it.

“Some display would be most suitable,” Hammond began, and was silenced only by Temeraire’s coldest look and his flat refusal to allow any such mutilation to be considered.

“Have done; you have made enough of a guy of me,” Granby himself said, with impatience. “You are as bad as her,” meaning Iskierka, who was meanwhile prancing about looking unbearably self-satisfied, and making eyes at Maila every minute of the day: Temeraire would have thought not even for gold would Iskierka have handed Granby over to someone else, to marry; and Granby did not even want to marry the Sapa Inca.

“You might at least wait for nicer weather,” Temeraire suggested, as a last resort; but not even Granby agreed on that point.

“Let us get the meeting over with; and I hope to God she thinks better of it,” he said, and two days later at morning their party was assembled in the Cusipata courtyard: the twenty aviators all in their fresh coats of green and their white trousers scrubbed and lemon-bleached and mended; Hammond in his handsome brown coat which did not show the stains of travel, and his sash of ambassadorship; Mrs. Pemberton in her black dress; and Granby undeniably splendid in the red cloak. Temeraire had not even the consolation of seeing Laurence in his finery: the robes remained in their box, and Laurence wore only one of the new coats and patched boots.

“I cannot outshine Granby on such an occasion,” Laurence had said; and Temeraire supposed it were just as well: if Anahuarque were to take it into her head to want Laurence instead, that would have been quite dreadful. Of course, Laurence would have made a splendid Emperor, but Temeraire was not Iskierka, to all but sell Laurence into marriage in such a manner, only to advance his rank.

“And wealth,” Iskierka said, “for Granby will own all of this, you know,” under her breath, indicating with the avaricious sweep of her gaze all the great hall of the Empress. For the occasion the walls had been specially burnished and all the silver polished bright, and great lanterns had been hung even though it was still daylight, only to make the metal and the gemstones shine all the more brightly.

The Inca herself wore a gown of surpassing magnificence, which Temeraire could not deny might even rival Laurence’s robes for elegance and splendor: it was woven of yellow and red and even threads spun out of gold, so that it sparkled in the light, and on this occasion she wore a crown of gold and silver, with the gorgeous plumes clasped within it at the top.

“That was my notion,” Iskierka whispered to Temeraire, who heard her out unwillingly, “they had no crowns here, but I told Maila that the monarchs of Europe all wear them, and he was in perfect agreement with me that it was an excellent design; so he has had one made for the Inca; and Granby shall have one, too, when they are married: and they are going to have thrones, also, only those take longer to be made.”

“They are not married yet; nothing has been settled,” Temeraire said to her, coldly; but it was a poor rejoinder, and she justly ignored it: the Sapa Inca did look at Granby with an acquisitive eye, while her courtiers looked at him sullenly, and Maila simpered at Iskierka and ruffled his feathers up along his shoulders and made a general spectacle of himself.

“I will be sure to tell her, Captain Granby,” Hammond said in a low voice, as they approached, “that you have no interest in governance—that you would not seek to interfere—?”

“Yes,” Granby said wearily, “you may tell her I will be a proper lap-dog, and let her have her own way in everything, and not do anything but sit next to her and nod when she pokes me; and you may as well remind her if I ever do care to do otherwise, I still shan’t be able to, as I don’t know ten words of the language yet and likely won’t put a sentence together for a year to come.”

“Captain Granby begs Your Majesty’s pardon,” Hammond said, “that his lack of skill in the language bars him expressing his gratitude for the honor which you have done him, by this invitation; and wishes me to convey to Your Majesty—”

He went on in this perfectly untruthful vein, with which Anahuarque seemed quite well-satisfied; Temeraire looked away to watch instead the traffic of dragons coming and going among the great stepped terraces and high roofs of the city, laid out before their present vantage point, which if less remarkable was at least less dreadful than the debacle in progress before him; and for interest there were three dragons coming in from the south, two rigged out with elaborate streaming banners of great size.

Then Temeraire sat up sharply: the banners were the tricolor, and the dragon in the center was white: “Laurence!” he said, interrupting Hammond, “Laurence, Lien is coming; and those are Flammes-de-Gloire beside her.”

Chapter 13

IT WAS NOT HIS FAULT, of course, but Temeraire conceded that his announcement had disrupted the ceremony beyond repair: the dragons of the Incan court were all sitting up and watching the oncoming dragons warily, paying Hammond’s attempts to resume his speechmaking no attention, and Maila had reared up on his hind legs and put a foreleg on the Inca’s podium as though he meant to snatch her up and go at once.

Temeraire could see Genevieve go up from the hall where the French were quartered, with Piccolo and Ardenteuse on her heels, to join the approaching party: and then all six dragons circled together overhead and descended one after another into the royal court, Piccolo unsubtly crowding against Kulingile’s shoulder to make room for Lien to come down.

She was looking splendidly, Temeraire could not help but reluctantly acknowledge: besides the immense diamond upon her breast, which caught the light of the lamps, she wore also a sort of gauntlet upon each foreleg—talon-sheaths tipped in rubies, joined by delicate lacy chains of silver to broad cuffs set with diamonds, which were in turn joined to another set of cuffs above her elbow-joint set with sapphires, so that she wore the colors of the tricolor herself. She wore no other harness, and carried but one rider—

The French dragons all bowed their heads low, and the men aboard their backs removed their hats; De Guignes slid from Genevieve’s back and knelt, as Napoleon dismounted from Lien’s back, stepping easily down onto her proffered foreleg, which she then lowered to the ground.

He took De Guignes by the shoulders and raised him up, kissed him on either cheek, and said in French, “Best of emissaries! You must not be offended that I have come myself, any more than are my Marshals when I come to take the field; some battles a man must win himself. This is the Empress?” And when De Guignes confirmed it, Napoleon said, “Then tell her, my friend, that I myself have come! And hazarded my own person, to show her the honor which I and France mean to do her, if she will come and grace our throne.”

If the Inca’s dragons were inclined to resent the intrusion of the French party into the ceremony, and Napoleon’s disregard of their protocol, his very temerity seemed to carry fortune with it: De Guignes was heard out, and the ruffled dragons gradually subsided on hearing Napoleon identified and his flamboyant message translated. Certainly there was enough courage to impress in the act of delivering himself into the power of a foreign sovereign; although Laurence noted that the two Flammes-de-Gloire bore each of them more than a usual complement of riflemen, all wary-eyed and with their guns ready to their hands.

A murmuring ran among the Incan dragons; even Maila looked uncertain, and abruptly Anahuarque raised a hand, and her court fell silent. “Tell the Emperor we welcome him to our court,” she said. “Such a great journey must have left him fatigued: you shall go and rest, and we will dine all together this evening, to celebrate the opening friendship among all our nations.”

Hammond translated this excessively optimistic speech for Laurence’s benefit, as the Sapa Inca turning spoke low to Maila, with a hand upon his muzzle. She then stepped into the dragon’s grasp; with one final look at Iskierka, he went aloft and carried her from the hall, while the other dragons swept away the rest of her retinue in similar fashion, and left the courtyard to their foreign guests.

Napoleon did not immediately depart himself, either: he turned smiling to the Frenchwomen who had been serving as De Guignes’s deputies, and kissed their hands; and not content with stopping there came towards them, exclaiming, “Captain Laurence! I hope I find you in the best of health.” He greeted Hammond and Granby on De Guignes’s introduction with a similar warmth, which disregarded all the just cause any Briton had to resent both his general overarching ambition, and most egregiously his late invasion of England, which had been only just thrown off two years before at the dreadful cost of Admiral Nelson’s life and the loss of fourteen ships-of-the-line, and twenty thousand men or more.

Laurence answered his inquiries with all the reserve which he could muster; Napoleon disregarded the latter, and pursued the former with unexpected intensity: before the onslaught of questioning Laurence found that he was saying more than he meant, about the peculiarities of the interior of Australia, and the sea-serpent trade established with China; at the description of which Lien might be seen to flatten her ruff back against her neck disapprovingly.

“I expect she does not think China ought to engage in commerce with foreign nations,” Temeraire said when they had returned to their own quarters, “just as she thinks Celestials ought not engage in battle.”

Hammond had managed to extricate them from the Emperor’s company with excuses barely short of outright rudeness; and when he had been set down fell to anxious pacing in their hall, muttering to himself, and packing coca leaves into his teapot. “Pray have a care not to disarrange your appearance,” he added, raising his head. “We cannot be sure when we will be summoned to dinner, and we must be ready; they are certain to have plans—offers to make—oh! The wretched timing of it all. Has Maila come to see Iskierka?”

“We have scarce been back here in the hall five minutes, so no, he hasn’t. And it is a sorry state of affairs,” Granby said to Laurence, dropping himself to the floor with a sigh, and no care for the beautiful red cloak which crumpled beneath him, “when I must cheer Napoleon on, and hope that he outdoes us all: but my God, I think I have never been so happy in my life as when he landed.”

Temeraire could not be pleased to see Napoleon, and still less Lien, but that did not mean feeling the least unhappiness at the oversetting of the ceremony. He felt Iskierka had deserved any amount of discomfiture. He flattened back his ruff as Maila came winging down to the courtyard to see her, and threw a scornful look her way. “I hope,” he said loudly, “that no self-respecting dragon would abase themselves, by pleading with the representative of a foreign nation, only from disappointment.”

“Oh!” said Iskierka, “I do not plead, with anyone,” and Temeraire had to do her justice: she received Maila very coolly, and only grew more so when he began to sidle around talking of Napoleon’s dramatic arrival, and how it must alter their immediate plans—how the Flammes-de-Gloire had been demonstrating the range of their own fire-breath, that afternoon—how Lien was a most unusual beast, and clearly blessed by the gods because of her remarkable coloration—

“You might try your luck with her,” Temeraire said, not even bothering to pretend that he was not listening in, “perhaps she will have eggs for you; but I should not expect it, myself.”

Maila huffed out his neck-collar feathers and said, “Lien has explained she is not able to have eggs, with a dragon so distant from her own ancestry—that Celestial dragons cannot be crossed with other kinds. She does not wish to waste our time, or else she would be honored; that is why she has brought the fire-breathers, who are two dragons of her honor-guard. They will remain here, if we wish it, to form closer ties between our people.”

While Temeraire reeled back into silence, appalled, Iskierka snorted. “If you think a couple of ratty French beasts are as good as me,” she said, “only because they can breathe a little fire, then you are welcome to their company: I have better things to do with my time than to make a push for anyone, much less anyone so undiscriminating.”

“I do not!” Maila protested. “I do not think them your equal, at all: that is why I am here. I am only warning you. You must come and speak to Anahuarque; you must persuade her—she must marry Granby, and send this foreign Emperor away, not marry him and go across the ocean.”

“If you ask me,” Temeraire said, his tail lashing violently—he had been deeply agitated since Maila’s visit, and Laurence had not yet had any opportunity to pursue the cause—“he is not interested in you and your eggs, after all; he wants only to keep the Empress locked up safe here in the mountains, and not let to do anything: and I am sure he will want to do the same with Granby, too.”

“He is, too, interested in my eggs,” Iskierka said, flaring, while Hammond urged their immediate attendance on the Inca: Maila was prepared to arrange a private audience at once, informally, for them to plead their cause.

“There can be not a moment to lose—the dinner this evening may decide everything, and in any case De Guignes may already be making them proposals by some other channel,” Hammond said, very nearly trying to drag Granby out the door, or push him, all while straightening his cloak and ignoring Granby’s half-attempts to thrust him away. “We must go, at once, at once.”

The conversation was thoroughly one-sided. Granby retired to the background with relief, after the first presentation, while Hammond flung himself into the breach wholeheartedly. But Anahuarque only listened impassive while Hammond tried one avenue and then another. He hinted at the dangers of the ocean crossing—spoke of the revolution in France, and the execution of the King and Queen—listed all the many nations which had lined up to oppose Napoleon’s ambition, never acknowledging that of these, Spain had all but fallen, Prussia had been defeated, Austria had accepted truce, Russia only watched from afar—

He ran down at last, and Anahuarque still said nothing, but only watched them with her dark, thoughtful eyes: her silence a deliberate thing, it seemed to Laurence, designed to invite Hammond’s very torrent of words, and all the intelligence which he might thereby deliver even unintentionally.

Laurence rose and said quietly, “Madam, we cannot know what will sway your decision, so I think we will take our leave of you and give you time to consider. I would only say, if you permit, that the Emperor is a prodigiously gifted man”—he ignored Hammond’s sudden frantic twitch of his sleeve—“prodigiously gifted man, who has turned those gifts to the evil service of ambition. There are no bounds to his appetite for the conquest and subjugation of other men, and whatever aid you choose to give him you may be certain will be turned to those ends, regardless of the misery and privation the pursuit will bring upon the world.”

He bowed, and turned to Temeraire, who was waiting to lift him up. “That was splendidly said, Laurence,” Temeraire said, as they flew back to their courtyard in company with Iskierka. “I am sure it must decide her for us: no-one could like to help Napoleon fight still more wars; not that wars are not exciting, but it is unreasonable.”

Laurence shook his head; he did not know, himself, anything more than that he had at least spoken the truth. He looked at Mrs. Pemberton, who had accompanied them; she said after a moment, “I would be more sanguine, sir, if she had not also seized herself a crown—but on the other hand,” she added, “I think she has not much desire to share it.”

The feast was a deeply peculiar affair: French and British soldiers seated across from one another, mostly unable or unwilling to communicate with one another except by scowling; the Inca’s generals on the upper and lower ends of the square joining in, more universally; the dragons seated behind the men murmuring to one another while they ate their roasted llamas. Even Hammond and De Guignes seemed thrown off their stride by the situation, with its equal shares of high tension and silence, and the only person who gave evidence of being thoroughly comfortable was Napoleon himself.

He had evidently studied Quechua to a little extent, and forged ahead in using his handful of words despite what Temeraire said scornfully to Laurence was a dreadful accent and no grammar whatsoever. He paid a relentless court to the Empress, though seated at several removes from her stool, and took advantage of a rather rude question from one of the warriors seated by her side as an excuse to sweep the cloth before him clear and demonstrate upon it the victory of Austerlitz, with pieces of potato to represent the battalions. Even Laurence could scarcely resist leaning in to hear this narrative; he thought ruefully, in his defense, that with all the just resentment in the world no military man could fail to be enraptured, until one considered the dreadful toll of life, and the consequences to all Europe.

Anahuarque, meanwhile, said very little; she gave Napoleon brief smiles, for encouragement, but as he spoke to the warriors of the battle, Laurence looked to see her eyes intent upon the Emperor, and surprised a look of cold and determined calculation in her face. She glanced back at Maila Yupanqui, who was coiled and brooding with his head laid beside her stool, and laid a hand gently upon his jaw; she bent and murmured to him, some reassurance perhaps for all the foreign men gathered at her table, and his ruffled feathers smoothed after a moment down against his throat.

“Well,” Granby said, fatalistically, as they left the table, “at least there’s this: she’ll only marry me if she wants someone who will not give her any bother; maybe I can even leave, in a few years.”

“If you have already given her a child; two or three, ideally. I hope your family are productive?” Hammond said, as they walked; only as an aside: he was sunk in gloom, and did not even notice the wry looks which his remark provoked.

“I don’t think anyone should say I had an excess of sensibility about the matter,” Granby said, which Laurence thought rather understated the case, “and in any case one could not worry over-much about a child with, as far as I can see, a dozen nursemaids over ten tons in size; beyond the usual line, that is; but it is over-much for Hammond to talk of my qualities as a sire in that way, as though I were a horse.”

“I am sure it was just Lien’s excuse,” Temeraire said, “and not true in the least; I do not believe it for an instant that Celestials cannot breed.”

“If you say so,” Kulingile said equably. “I don’t see it matters much,” which Temeraire could not agree with; but then, Kulingile was rather young, and did not yet think of eggs as desirable things. He did not appreciate properly that Temeraire’s own egg had been so valuable a prize that Laurence’s two-eighths share, as captain of the vessel which had seized it, had bought the splendid breastplate of platinum and sapphire which Temeraire yet wore; and that Iskierka’s egg had commanded a hundred thousand pounds in gold coins—of course, no-one had known at the time what her personality was to be, and Temeraire had been thought only an Imperial rather than a Celestial dragon. But that only went to show how very important eggs were: no-one in Britain would give a hundred thousand pounds for Iskierka to-day, he was quite sure; except perhaps Hammond at the present moment.

“It is just chance,” Temeraire said uneasily, “that I have not yet had an egg—”

Iskierka, who was watching narrowly across the great courtyard, where the lamps showed Maila sitting outside the French hall and speaking with the Flammes-de-Gloire, snorted over her shoulder. “After all that noise you made, of having to do your duty by all those dragons in the breeding grounds which they put you to? And that was years ago: by now there would surely be news, if any of them had got an egg by you.”

“Well, if Lien is telling a little of the truth, perhaps it is that I have not tried enough with the right sort of dragon,” Temeraire said, “for they were forever putting me to only the most docile beasts—not,” he added, “that they were not perfectly pleasant creatures; but they had none of them been particularly remarkable, in battle, and many of them were only middle-weights—”

“You do not need to hint,” Iskierka said, with a huff, “although it would serve you perfectly well if I did not care to anymore; but I will try now with you, if you like, and Maila can wait,” she added, in a rather venomous tone, “as he likes to go sit and make eyes at the Frogs.”

“I was not hinting—” but Temeraire shook out his ruff, and hastily said, “—oh, never mind; very well,” when Iskierka bridled up, with a martial light in her eye. Privately even he might admit that it would be something, to have an egg with both the divine wind and breathing fire. He bent his head, and surreptitiously polished his breastplate; it was too bad he had not insisted on his talon-sheaths for the ceremony earlier, he belatedly thought; only he had not felt like putting his best forward on what had been such a dismal occasion.

“Come on, then,” Iskierka said. “I should like a snack first: I saw a herd of those wild llamas moving on the plain to the south, yesterday, and I dare say they are still there; and there was a nice private little valley just up the mountain-side from there.”

“Those were tasty,” Iskierka said, licking her chops: when they had finished hunting, Temeraire had persuaded her to heat up a few rocks with her fire; he had piled them into a pit with the llamas and buried them along with a pleasantly aromatic shrub and a bit of water from a salt spring, so that when they had finished their business, the llamas were cooked and ready to eat.

“And we shall see,” Iskierka continued, “about the egg. It does not seem to me there was much to it, and I am sure for my part at least, everything will go smoothly. I have been ready this age: if only you were not always so difficult.”

“As though you had any business accusing anyone else of being difficult,” Temeraire said, but without much heat; the llamas had been excellent, which he considered a triumph in his first attempt at cooking anything himself. And after all, no-one could deny that Iskierka was an impressive dragon. Her spikes had even not been so very awkward as he might have thought, although requiring some ingenuity in maneuvering.

It was nearly morning: a certain pallid quality to the sky behind the mountains ahead of them as they flew back to the city, Temeraire carrying a couple of extra cooked llamas, which he meant to show to Gong Su for his approbation. “What is going on, there?” Iskierka said suddenly, as they drew near: there were many dragons gathering behind a wall of the great city fortress, and also soldiers in their woven armor with swords and musketry, forming into lines.

“Wait: this way, we mustn’t let them know we have seen them,” Temeraire said, nipping at Iskierka’s wing, and they darted back out of sight behind a curve of the mountain-side. Temeraire set down his llamas. “Wait here—oh, pray stop grumbling; if you should let off any steam or fire, they will certainly see you at once.”

“I do not care, in the least,” Iskierka said. “What are they about? Of course they are making an ambush,” she added impatiently, “but on us, or on the French?” She stretched out her neck to peer at the gathering force.

Temeraire went aloft, careful to keep the gradually lightening sky ahead of him, and studied the scene: the British enclave lay to the east of the soldiers’ position, the French to the west; both in striking distance. The Inca’s soldiers were carrying shields covered splendidly in silver, and one of these caught the rising sunlight and gleamed painfully bright out of the terrace for an instant as Temeraire looked.

“On us,” Temeraire said to Iskierka, as he dropped down to seize his llamas again: they might need the food, he thought. “They are going to attack us; we must fly at once.”