Blood of Tyrants (36 page)

“But who put it on you?” Temeraire said, still bewildered, “and what did you want with me? And if you were looking for me, why would you be here?
I
was not here, until presently; are you saying you have just come from Peking?”

“Why do you say such ridiculous things?” Arkady said. “As though I meant to be here, in this dreadful condition! We were going to Peking: there was some letter you sent, that you meant to go there, or so Admiral Roland said. And as for what did I want with you, how dare you ask me such a thing. What has happened to
my egg
?”

“Your egg!” Temeraire said, with a guilty start of remembering.

Arkady was rousing up despite his miserable state, and he blazed on reproachfully. “I left it in your charge, on that great ship, to take to New South Wales; then I hear you are in Brazil instead, and going on to China. Why are you not there, keeping watch upon it?”

“Oh,” Temeraire said, writhing a little in shame and discomfort; he did not know how to tell Arkady what had happened. His egg had been treated with the greatest of care; but that had not availed anything: it had hatched out Caesar, a most disagreeable dragon, who had taken as captain none other than the paltry Jeremy Rankin. “I did assure Caesar,” Temeraire offered desperately in his own defense, “that he needn’t take on anyone he didn’t like; that I should not have permitted Rankin to force harness on him—only Caesar would have it, because he learnt that Rankin is the son of an earl, and, I believe, very rich—”

“Ah! Why did you not say so at once?” Arkady closed his eyes in relief. “Then all is well. I am sorry I doubted you,” he said handsomely. And by way of heaping coals of fire on Temeraire’s conscience went on, “Only some very strange stories came to us, that you had lost an egg—that someone had stolen it from under your nose—”

Temeraire squirmed even more wretchedly. He had indeed lost an egg to thieves, though not Arkady’s, and it was not much excuse that he had found it safely hatched in the end; the egg had not hatched in British hands, and anything might have happened to it during the long dreadful chase across the desert. He seized upon the quickest excuse to change the subject. “Well, I did not lose
your
egg, at all,” he said hastily, “and I am very happy to have been able to reassure you on the subject. So that is why you came from England?”

“Yes,” Arkady said, “for Wringe is brooding again,” triumphantly, “and you may be sure we were not going to let go another egg, when the first had not been properly looked after. But now that it seems there was right care taken, I suppose we will let the officers have it, after all.”

“Well, I am sure they will look after it properly,” Temeraire said, relieved to have escaped with so little of the scolding he guiltily felt he deserved, “but now pray tell me,
how
did you come here? I suppose you took transport to Guangzhou?”

He had already worked out the picture: surely General Fela’s men had seen Arkady being taken prisoner by the rebels, and had misunderstood; they had thought
he
was bringing the opium, when instead he had been their helpless prisoner.

But Arkady said, “No, of course not! It is eight months at sea; there was no time for that! I suppose you would have gone somewhere else by the time we came, the way you have been running all over the world. We came by the Pamirs, and to Xian, because we thought this would be a quicker way to Peking. Instead here I am all chained up, and you
have
gone on somewhere else.”

“I do not see that you have any business complaining about my having gone on,” Temeraire said, a bit indignantly, “as I have gone on here, and otherwise I dare say the rebels would have kept you chained up here forever.”

“Rebels?” Arkady said. “What rebels?”

“The White Lotus,” Temeraire said, “who took you prisoner.
But it will all be all right now,” he added, “for this proves you were not bringing them opium: if you were, they would certainly not have chained you up.”

“I was not bringing opium to anyone, but I do not know anything about this White Lotus, or any rebels,” Arkady said. “I was chained up by some great red dragons, a dozen at least. I fought them very bravely, but there were too many of them: they held me down for the men to put those chains on me, though we were only flying through and asking them the way to Peking.”

“Red dragons?” Temeraire said, puzzling. “Like the dragons in the army?”

“Yes,” Arkady said, “in jeweled collars, and their men shouted at us a long time, but I do not understand how they talk, nor do I want to.”

“What is he saying?” Forthing said, looking up from his search of the camp, as Sipho came scrambling out of one of the tents with an odd blade in his hand, wide at the end and narrow at the hilt, and brought it over to them.

“Look what I found,” Sipho said. “There are more of them, inside.”

“That might do, to pry these open,” Ferris said, reaching for it.

“That is not what I mean!” Sipho said. “These are the same kind of swords those fellows used when they tried to murder the captain.”

“Oh!” Temeraire said, whipping his head around. “Oh, these are not the rebels; these are the assassins! Where did they go?” Temeraire demanded of Arkady. “How many of them were there—”

“How many of who?” Arkady said, opening his eyes again to slits and glaring sullenly: he had drooped weakly against Temeraire’s side again. “I did not count them: there were enough to chain me up. Hundreds, I suppose! Why do you not get this thing off my back so I can fly again?”

A low rumbling of distant thunder came, and came, and came, growing louder and more near. Temeraire looked up in alarm, and
saw the narrow shelf of rock above them crumbling. “Look out!” Ferris called out, but there was no time to get him aboard, to get any of them aboard: the rock was coming down in a roaring torrent. Temeraire lunged and put himself above Sipho and Ferris, and scraped Forthing in quickly beneath him as well with one foreleg; then the rockslide was upon them, boulders pounding Temeraire’s hips and back painfully as a rain of pelting pebbles and sand roared down with them. Arkady pressed up against his side, taking less of the brunt though squalling furiously nonetheless.

The noise died away first; then the rocks settled, though the air was still full of choking, clouding dust. Temeraire sneezed and sneezed, and coughed, and said hoarsely to Arkady, “Do stop yowling; it does not make matters any better.” He shook his head to cast off the worst of the dust; he would have liked to wipe his eyes against his forelegs, but the pebbles and stones had buried him up to his withers.

“
You
are not wearing this monstrosity,” Arkady returned, “and you are half out of the rocks,” with some justice, for the rocks cascading over Temeraire’s back had covered Arkady to the base of his neck, so only his head and his wing-tips poked out. “Aren’t you strong enough to heave out of them and get us loose? It hurts,” he added plaintively.

“I am sure it does hurt; I am not at all comfortable myself,” Temeraire said. “And I dare say I might get us out,” he added, although he was not in the least certain; he felt very unpleasantly pinned, “but I cannot risk shifting these rocks. I am sure if I moved they would kill Ferris and Sipho, and Forthing, in a trice. There is nothing to do for it but wait until someone should find us,” he finished glumly.

He did not in the least look forward to being found in such an absurd position, having done nothing whatsoever heroic, and found only Arkady, who was of no use to anyone; and Temeraire supposed that now the assassins would have fled to some new hiding place long before he should ever be dug out.

“I do not see why that mountain should have chosen now of all times to fall down on us,” he added resentfully, and looking up saw some men peering down upon him from the ruined summit: men in soldiers’ uniforms. “Oh!” he said. “You there,” he called, raising his voice, “send word to the camp—”

“Why are you talking to them?” Arkady said. “Hurry and get loose, and never mind about your men, I am sure they will be all right! Those are them, those are the ones who put these chains on me!”

Temeraire jerked his head around to stare at Arkady. “What?” he said. “But those are soldiers from the army—” and broke off, in understanding and in swelling wrath. “I
will
kill General Fela, I
will
,” he vowed.

“You will not kill anyone if you are stuck under those rocks,” Arkady said, “Quick, quick!” and looked with fear as the soldiers began to pick their way down the loosened slope, with long sharp pole-arms in their hands.

“And you have seen nothing of him since?” Laurence asked, frowning.

O’Dea shrugged. “Mr. Ferris was aboard, and Mr. Forthing, too,” he said, “and that young black fellow. I suppose they may have run into a thunderstorm, or gone afoul of some mountain current; ah, it’s sure there’s many a dragon’s bones littering these peaks, Captain. And those pernicious rebels out there somewhere, no doubt looking for a choice target.”

“Yes, thank you, O’Dea,” Laurence said. The more likely, and perhaps worse possibility, was that Temeraire had fled the camp in misery, and wished to avoid Laurence entirely; that Temeraire did not wish to return. Laurence stood a moment in the pavilion, worrying the straps of his well-worn harness in his hands, the carabiners hanging empty. He should not have cared so much as he did; his heart ought not have been bound up so completely, and yet he
could not but recognize that it was. There, perhaps, was his answer: loving Temeraire, and seeing in him all dragonkind, he had not been able to take refuge behind some comforting fiction of their being mere beasts. He wondered now that he had ever thought them so. It had outweighed treason, in his heart; he was not sure he had been wrong.

He looked hesitantly over the camp. They were still under guard, the scarlet dragons watching from their posts, and the British dragons had not tried to go on maneuvers. Chu had evidently ordered patrols of the region, but only by the other dragons under his command. Laurence had seen them overhead, flying in small groups.

To take Iskierka up, or Lily, or one of the heavy-weights, would at once be provoking and leave their own party too bare. But one of the Yellow Reapers was sleeping near-by, Immortalis, and his captain, Little, was sitting beside the drowsing beast and sketching a little upon a writing-desk—an illustration of a Chinese pistol, which he had evidently got somehow from one of the soldiers, perhaps in exchange for his own. He had a neat hand; Laurence paused and Little looked up from his work and straightened.

“Captain Laurence,” he said, formally.

“Captain,” Laurence said, “I would not disturb you, but Temeraire has been gone some time, and I—I have some reason for believing him in some distress. May I presume so far as to ask you to take me up in search of him?”

“Ah,” Little said, and was silent, obviously hesitant. Laurence recalled too late that Little had been awkward about him and had avoided conversation whenever conversation might be avoided. Easy to understand, now: Little of course had known of the treason which Laurence had committed, even when Laurence himself had not. Little had known the stain upon his character, and perhaps cared more than the other aviators; because Granby sympathized, and Harcourt, did not mean they all did so.

“I beg your pardon,” Laurence said. “I have not the least desire
to impose on you; pray consider the request withdrawn.” He would have gone, at once, but Little rose hastily.

“No, no,” Little said. “I do beg your pardon. Of course we ought to go and find him.”

They had flown a couple of widening circuits of the camp when Immortalis turned his head over his shoulder and said to Little, “Augustine, what is that there, do you think?” A plume of smoke and dust was rising from a knot of mountains not far in the distance.

“That is no ordinary rockfall; that is black powder,” Laurence said, when they had gone close enough for the sulfurous smell to reach them.

“The rebels, do you suppose?” Little said. “We had better have a quick look,” he told his dragon, and came rounding over the smoke, cautiously, to find Temeraire buried in stones up to his collarbone with a small grey dragon by his side, its head marked with a bright crimson patch like a birthmark.

“Good God, is that Arkady?” Little said.

“Do you know that beast?” Laurence said, startled. “Is he is one of ours?”

“Yes, but what the devil he is doing in China, I should like to know,” Little said. “Immortalis, take us down there. What they have been doing to get themselves buried like that—”

There were some soldiers already clambering over the stones towards the two imprisoned dragons; but Temeraire whipped his head around on his long neck and snapped at them, his jaws clashing on empty air: the men were beyond even his reach. “Temeraire!” Laurence called out surprised as he leapt from Immortalis’s back.

“Laurence!” Temeraire cried, catching sight of them, “Laurence, look out! They are assassins, all of them.”

“What?” Little said, himself just slid down from Immortalis’s back.

A shadow was growing on the ground beneath them, and Laurence, seeing it, turned and shouted to Immortalis through cupped
hands, “Aloft again, quick!” while he and Little both dived for safety. A great scarlet beast in armor came heavily down where Immortalis had just in time darted away, its claws digging furrows in the rock; the beast roared and swung its head narrow-eyed over them all.

Laurence scrambled away over the loose stones, towards Temeraire and Arkady. The red-patch dragon looked down at him and said in a strange tongue, which Laurence only a little followed, “Make Temeraire move! They will all be squashed anyway, if those men kill him.”

“Laurence, be careful,” Temeraire called anxiously. “Do not get anywhere near these fellows; and that is for you,” he added, snapping again at one of the soldiers, who had lunged at him, a weapon a little like an old-fashioned halberd in his hand, a curved and wicked blade bound to the end of a long staff, which he jabbed at Temeraire’s eyes. “Ow!” Temeraire added, and Laurence saw one of the other soldiers had climbed up onto his back and was stabbing the blade down towards Temeraire’s spine.