League of Dragons (22 page)

“But if you do?” Tharkay said later that evening, after Granby had retired. “It is a hazard as well to consider before as after meeting it,” he added, when Laurence did not immediately answer. “Napoleon cannot have commanded the attendance of so many dragons—so many ferals, and beasts of other nations—only with respect.”

“You think he means to lay some proposal before them, which will make a marked improvement to their condition,” Laurence said.

“I can see no other motive that would compel them to listen,” Tharkay said.

Laurence had too many bitter proofs of the disdain and fear which prevailed among his own country-men—his own Government—towards dragons, and the determined persistence of their hostility. He knew which alternative Whitehall would have preferred, between the hideous Russian practice of wing-hobbling and starving any beast that would not go into harness, and Napoleon's eager efforts to win the love and loyalty of his beasts, and bring them into the full life of their nation. Necessity might force the admirals to grant, with immense and grudging reluctance, a few piecemeal rights and liberties: there were too many natural advantages to Napoleon's course to be wholly ignored. But necessity only would move them. England would do nothing for dragons from any sense of justice or charity, while Napoleon worked tirelessly to fling wide the barred gates of breeding ground and covert.

“But I have this to armor me against Napoleon's most pleasant aims,” Laurence said, “that all he does has ever been for his own selfish vainglory. He wishes to be loved by the dragons of France not for their sake but for his. He has had no hesitation in spilling their blood, and the blood of his soldiers, to make himself a perfect tyrant, bestriding the world unopposed. He cannot suffer an equal—and so he cannot be suffered. His means, his immediate acts, may be noble; his ends are less so, and he has shown himself insensible to the wreck and horror of war.”

He was silent however awhile after speaking. He knew Tharkay regarded him with concern, which he could acknowledge was not unmerited. He could not be easy to find himself the instrument, in however small and unwilling a part, of Bonaparte's success, and his spirits indeed required all the support which he could give them. His father's death returned to his thoughts easily—too easily; he could not help but indulge privately in a bitter kind of relief that Lord Allendale had not suffered the pain of hearing it put about that his son was, not the prisoner of the French Emperor, but his honored guest, in the midst of war.

Laurence put the thought aside. The evil deed which had occasioned his present circumstances had been finished long ago, and he had since then—not without severe difficulty—reconciled himself to the necessity of its commission. He would not now learn to regret that he had been the instrument of saving so many lives from a hideous and tormented end—that so many of the dragons here present should only have survived, even to become the enemies of his nation, because of his actions. Victory by such a method must have been hateful to any man of honor, and if some claiming that title justified themselves by willfully refusing to acknowledge the sentience of dragons, Laurence was not of their number;
he
could not so deceive himself.

“I am satisfied,” Tharkay said, with a narrow, steady look, “except on one point. I know how greatly you have enjoyed Napoleon's generous attentions,” this dryly, “but you must know I would never have desired, or still less urged you to invite them, for my sake.”

“I hope,” Laurence said, “that I would not require
urging,
to undertake any service on your behalf. In any case, we have had too much evidence of Napoleon's desire to make a parade of me to suppose that his attentions would have been long delayed, and he can have wanted neither excuse nor consent to set about them, since I have given him neither.”

Tharkay shook his head a little, dissatisfied. “I would prefer you not to permit any such consideration to weigh with you again. I undertook the hazards of my, shall we say,
occupation,
freely and with full knowledge of the consequences were I ever identified to the enemy.”

“That cannot make me less inclined to avert those consequences,” Laurence said. “But you may be easy. If I have given Napoleon the power of making me appear his friend, I now mean to make him as well as his guests the best proofs to the contrary that I can, and I know you will not speak to stop me.”

“Indeed not,” Tharkay said. “I am only sorry to have been unveiled so inconveniently.”

There was a hard look in his eyes, which made Laurence dare to ask, “Do you know how it may have come about?”

“A reward for success, I imagine,” Tharkay said. “My latest report on the political situation in the Porte may have been excessively useful: the Sultan remains Napoleon's ally, and is unlikely to shift his position so long as we are aligned with Russia, but I discovered that a significant vezir was susceptible to persuasion. The Chinese legions we hope for will not encounter any direct opposition, if they come overland.”

“That is an excellent piece of news indeed,” Laurence said, low, “but how should it have exposed you?”

“I imagine the report has circulated a little too widely for my health,” Tharkay said. “It so happens that one of my beloved cousins has a minor sinecure, somewhere or other under the Navy Board.”

“Good God,” Laurence said. “And you suppose him to have turned traitor?”

“Oh, I am sure he would call it no such thing,” Tharkay said. “I doubt that the report was sold along with my name—which explains M. Fouché's eagerness to discuss the operation with me. No, I am sure dear Ambrose merely found it an irresistible opportunity to be rid of me and my inconvenient attempts to assert my right to my patrimony, and at a profit no less.”

He spoke lightly, but Laurence knew to measure the depth of Tharkay's feelings less by what he said, than by what he did not say, and Tharkay had not mentioned his paternal family over a dozen times in all the years of their acquaintance. It was to a mere offhand mention that Laurence owed the knowledge of their existence; and to the accident of a shipboard communication that those relations, who had taken pains to furnish Tharkay with every apparent proof of family affection until his father's death, had since that event done everything in their power to steal his inheritance and deny his legitimacy.

They had succeeded so far to render him friendless and penniless in Britain, dependent on the kindness of an old acquaintance of his father's in the East India Company for even the little and dangerous foreign employment he had been able to obtain, as a go-between and a guide. Only the prize-money paid him, for having recruited some twenty feral beasts out of the Pamirs to Britain's service, had finally enabled him to press a law-suit to recover his rights; but this had dragged ever since.

“I am sorry to lose the power of disappointing your cousin's designs,” Laurence said quietly. “I hope, Tenzing, you know that I wish I hazarded my safety equally with yours.”

“Oh, permit me to comfort you on that score,” Tharkay said. “Napoleon does not seem to me to care much for being balked. When you have gone romping around his carefully assembled guests, and done your best to overturn his remarkable conclave, I have every hope of your provoking him to all the outward displays of wrath that you might wish. You are as likely to be executed as I am.”

The request had been made of Aurigny, and permission came the next morning swiftly and enthusiastically: they were to have the full run of the grounds, although the Emperor regretted they must not go near the northern edge of the gardens where Temeraire and Iskierka were housed. But their escort would gently guide them away if they should accidentally stray too far in that direction, and they would dine with the Emperor and the Empress tomorrow night, an honor Laurence received unwillingly, and Granby with outright dismay.

“There is not a moment to lose: let us do our best to put him in a towering rage at once,” he said. “It won't be too late for him to withdraw the invitation, and for my part, I had rather be in the stocks than at another such dinner table.”

Tharkay's memory of the plan of the grounds was good enough to bring them near the Tswana, not without a little circumnavigation that Laurence could not regret, as serving to deceive their escort of six excellent and determined Grognards. He spoke with Aurigny and his companions a little as they walked the paths; they spoke of their emperor with an extreme familiarity, and cheerfully cursed the vagaries of his will that had put them on “sheepdog-duty,” as one fellow put it, and away from the front lines. “Ah, but he must let us have a little fighting sometime,” one of them named Brouilly said, a little indiscreetly, “now that the Prussians are lining up for another drubbing—I was at Austerlitz,” he added, with pardonable pride, and touching the medal in his lapel with a caressing finger.

Tharkay glanced round, when he had made another turn, and Laurence saw he had put them upon a narrow walk, between two pavilions. Beyond them was visible the carved pediment of the particularly large one where they had seen the Tswana, the day before. There remained only to find some excuse to go near enough to speak to them: Laurence regretted Temeraire's absence all the more, for having very little command of the Tswana-language, himself, but they might contrive somehow, if there were will on both sides. Laurence had no aim of concealing from the guards what he said and did: so long as they did not drag him bodily away before he had said as much as he could, he would be satisfied.

“I must compliment the design of your pavilions,” Laurence said to Aurigny, not without an inward shading of distaste for this species of deceit. “The floors are heated, I believe? I hope there is no objection to our making an examination of some few of the buildings.”

Aurigny did not demur, and in a half-counterfeit of interest Laurence went to the nearest pavilion and made a little show of discovering the heating-stove—an invention not of French but of Chinese origin, with which he had long been familiar, although this one had certain clever modifications, which brought the deception nearer truth. Laurence would gladly have acquired plans of the system, although the thought reminded him unpleasantly that he had few prospects of making any use of such a design—heating was not much required in New South Wales, and even if he and Temeraire were ever suffered to make their home again in England, they were not likely to have the power of setting up any pavilions.

“John, will you have a look?” he said, calling Granby's attention to the location of the heating-pipes, which carried the hot water from the low gurgling kettle and circulated it into the base of the pavilion, and thought nothing of it when the dragons sleeping within raised their heads to look over at them: two middle-weight beasts, bright sky-blue in color and of a sleek configuration not so far from Temeraire's lines, with large but tightly furled wings and banding across the ridge of a rounded nose not unlike a snake; they had long fangs hanging over their jaws. The guards showed no concern, although perhaps for the youngest of their number,
affected
no concern: his hand rested upon his pistol, and his eyes remained on the dragons instead of his prisoners.

And then one of the beasts hissed inward, a long and threatening whistle of breath, and said,
“British.”

Granby, anxious over playing his part, had been bent with excessive attention to examine the pipes; he jerked his head up, took one look at the dragons, and said, “Oh, Lord, they are Bengal,” and turned reaching for Laurence even as one of the beasts brought a slashing, many-taloned claw down.

Instinct moved quicker, and the shadow of the falling blow: Laurence dived aside and took himself rolling into the brush, while Granby fell back in the opposite direction towards the path. The claws passed with tearing force between them, carrying away two of the hot-water pipes. Clouds of hot steam erupted whistling into the air, and the dragon jerked back its talons with a hiss of pain.

The guards were shouting protests and drawing their swords and pistols, but a party adequate to guard three men was not sufficient to give pause to an angry dragon. The two beasts came slithering to their full length out of the pavilion, clawing over the ground with startling speed even with their wings still folded to avoid the trees, their heads swinging to either side back and forth searchingly. The meager cover of the steam-clouds was quickly failing as the burst pipes ran dry. Laurence, getting his feet beneath him, made a crouching dash for a stand of trees—and threw himself behind it only just as the trunk groaned, spitting bark to either side of him, with a blow from the dragon's head.

Pistol-fire was cracking loud behind him, on the path. One of the dragons had turned that way; another had come after him. She had drawn her head back, shaking off the impact against the tree, and in the brief respite, Laurence dashed for a hollow between a pair of massive boulders, artfully arranged for decorative effect to conceal one pavilion from another; fistfuls of moss tore away beneath his hands as he hauled himself into the small space. The dragon came on after him, putting her gleaming yellow eye to the crack.
“British,”
she hissed again, full of hatred. She wore a neck-collar of gold, very dirty, which looked also as though pieces had been broken off at different times—perhaps to sell, for her keep. She was a lean and older beast, with scales showing the broadening of age.

He ducked back deeper into his hiding-hole as the dragon tried scraping a couple of talons through the opening, nearly catching him. She clawed against the rocks in frustration, a hideous scraping noise. He might have called out to her, but he had no argument to make which he thought would have any weight with an enraged and vengeful dragon. Laurence reflected grimly that he ought to have considered that not
every
dragon here would have cause to esteem him; Napoleon would surely have been as happy to recruit more dragons who shared his devoted enmity for Britain.