Blood of Tyrants (38 page)

A
NOTHER HOUR PASSED
;
NIGHT
had come. Enough of the rocks had been drawn away, by now, that Temeraire could breathe freely once more; but he scarcely noticed the relief, by comparison with the rest, although he was very glad when Arkady—who had begun by then to feel well enough to complain incessantly and fidget—was freed from his side and helped away. Immortalis had stolen back to the camp, under cover of dark, to tell the others what had happened; Nitidus had flown back carrying Maximus’s surgeon Gaiters, who now was studying the dreadful chains and considering how they might best be removed.

Temeraire could not quarrel with his situation despite the discomfort. It was worth, oh, everything! to know that Laurence did not wish to leave him. Temeraire was with some difficulty trying to comprehend Laurence’s disgust of his own lost fortune—he could scarcely call it anything else—only because it could not buy him honor. The fortune
could
have bought him a great many other things, all of them very splendid, so that did not really explain it to Temeraire’s satisfaction. But he was not so determined to be unhappy that he would insist on Laurence’s being so, having been given such assurances.

“Why is he taking so long about it?” Arkady demanded of Temeraire, breaking in on his thoughts. Temeraire jerked his head up, for he had been drifting in a half-doze, dull with fatigue even though
he could breathe now more easily. “Tell him to finish and take it off me. I do not see why he is waiting.”

Temeraire looked over. Gaiters had already drawn the hooks which had been driven through Arkady’s wings, by cutting them and pulling them away; his point of concern seemed to be how to cut out the barbs in Arkady’s shoulders so that the flesh would not be torn so badly that he could not fly.

“Well, I will have a go at it, at any rate. Horrocks, get me my knives,” Gaiters said, calling down from Arkady’s back to his assistant, and Kulingile was pressed from the work of digging to hold Arkady still for the operation. Arkady indeed shrilled loudly in protest and shuddered all over while the cruel knives dug around in his flesh; Horrocks pointed, now and again, and Gaiters, without taking his eyes off his work, grunted and nodded in answer, while the blood welled up continually around his hands. Horrocks mopped about them with a rag, and three of the midwingmen stood holding the bar of the barb steady.

Temeraire tried not to watch; it was gruesome, and he did not like surgery at all. But some fascination drew his eyes again and again to the spectacle, until at last Gaiters gave the word. “All right, fellows, lift away,” and he and Horrocks together reached within the wound to guide the barb out as the midwingmen raised up the bar. It emerged little by little—a thing of horror with curling spikes and gobbets of flesh still clinging to them.

The second one was extracted more quickly: not five minutes, and then Horrocks was finishing the sewing while Gaiters washed his hands. “What a vicious piece of work,” Gaiters said, looking it over laid out upon the ground. “I have never seen the like. I suppose they have so many dragons here they don’t mind if they ruin a number of them.”

Temeraire was very glad to have it bundled up and taken away, in any case; Arkady was coaxed limping away to a corner of the encampment, as he had been warned away from any exertion until the wounds had healed, where he collapsed almost at once into slumber, snoring loudly.

Kulingile turned back to help with the digging. Nitidus had been working industriously on the stones directly before Temeraire’s chest, clearing a safe path; he suddenly exclaimed, “Oh! I hear them; I am sure I do,” and in another quarter of an hour Sipho scrambled out of the first narrow opening, and a little while after Ferris and Forthing came staggering out over Temeraire’s forearm, which was still pinned in place.

Then at last Temeraire could heave himself free, the last of the stones pouring away from his hindquarters as he lunged out, and he collapsed wearily with a sigh beside Arkady. “Oh! how tired I am,” Temeraire said, closing his eyes, only for a moment, as Laurence came to his side and stroked his muzzle again. “But I am not going to wait an instant. We must get back to camp, and I
will
squash General Fela, and I do not mean to let Hammond or anyone else talk me out of it, either.”

But somehow his eyes did droop shut; they closed, and he heard Laurence saying, “He must have some water, and something to eat. Can we get it out of the camp, without being observed?”

He woke again with Mei nosing at him anxiously, and an even more anxious cow lowing in his ear: fortunately this second might be dealt with in the most summary fashion, if somewhat indecorously. Temeraire swallowed down the last bite of the head, spat out the horns, and said, “I beg your pardon: I was extremely hungry.”

Arkady himself was still sleeping, and Laurence was drowsing as well beneath the remains of one of the encampment’s tents, ragged and much abused by the landslide. Immortalis and Kulingile had gone back to camp. “We do not at all want General Fela to know you have uncovered his treason,” Mei said, much to Temeraire’s outrage. “We must find proof of his treachery which can be demonstrated to the Emperor, first. You have killed everyone here, so we have no-one to obtain a confession from.”

She sounded faintly reproachful about the last. “Well, they were trying to kill us, so I do not see how you can complain of that,” Temeraire said. “It is the outside of enough to say that we
must have
more
proof. They are soldiers, they are under Fela’s command, and they were holding Arkady prisoner here, hidden away from all of us, and pretending that
he
brought the opium.”

“But you must see that Fela can make any number of excuses,” Mei said. “He will say that he did not know of these soldiers, that they are some small band of deserters; or he will say that Arkady
did
bring the opium, and is a false witness, and demand that he be put to torture.”

“What is she saying about me?” Arkady said, pricking up his head, his eyes sliding open. “And what is there to eat? I smell blood: have you not left me anything?” he added accusingly.

Temeraire did not think it was very prudent to tell Arkady that there might be any question of torture. “She is saying we must have more proof that General Fela is guilty, and that you did not bring the opium here,” he said. “And you needn’t complain; there is a nice goat, right there.” He also did not think it needed to be mentioned there had been a cow, too, just lately; anyway he was much bigger than Arkady, and needed a larger meal.

“Hm,” Arkady said, and reaching out seized the tethered goat with a practiced blow, to break its neck. “I do not see that question is sensible at all,” he said, around a mouthful. “Where would I have got any opium, and why would I have brought it here if I had? What good is it? Is it worth a lot of money?”

“Well, it is,” Temeraire said, “but General Fela would have it that you brought it here to give to some rebels.”

“He could scarcely have brought so many chests, alone,” Laurence said, coming out of the tent and buckling on his sword as he did. “Temeraire, pray inquire where he was intercepted, and how long ago? Why did he not come through Guangzhou?”

Arkady was disinclined to be helpful; he was already sagging back into exhausted sleep, and complained that he was tired after his meal, but after a little prodding muttered fretfully, “A month, and all this while I have been alone, and in chains, and now you will not let me sleep. Why would we have come so roundabout a
way as the ocean? We had to come quickly: we have an important message for you.”

“Who does he mean by ‘we’?” Laurence asked.

“Oh,” Arkady said, lifting his head abruptly, looking more wide-awake and to Temeraire’s instant suspicion guilty; then he said in feigned tones of great surprise, “Why, Tharkay was with me, of course; haven’t you rescued him yet?”

“My God,” Granby said, springing up with dismay, when he heard the name. “You don’t remember,” he added to Laurence, “but he is a damned good fellow; he has saved all our necks more than once. I suppose Roland must have asked him to play the courier. He knows those roads backwards and forwards; his people on his mother’s side are in Nepal. He took us to Istanbul overland, the last time we were in this country.”

Laurence briefly caught at an elusive twist of memory: running beside someone through dark half-deserted streets, and a great echoing vaulted chamber half-drowned in water, drops striking like bells; but it meant nothing, and slid from his grasp without leaving him a face or a voice, though from what Granby said they had known the man five years and more.

“It was some human thing, about the war,” was all Arkady could tell them, maddeningly, of the message Tharkay had carried, “—something that fellow Napoleon means to do.” This ominous news might have encompassed everything from another invasion to offering peace on terrible terms, but Arkady flipped one wing in a small shrug when they pressed him. “It did not seem very important to me; I had my
egg
to think about. You will have to ask Tharkay.”

“If he is even alive,” Granby said, “and we can find him: Fela and his crew have been torturing him, no doubt, to get a confession out of him to use against us.”

“What we’re to do about it is the question,” Captain Harcourt
said, later that night. They had gathered in her tent, as secretly as they might, to discuss the matter; Mei had smuggled Laurence back to the camp, under cover of dark, while Temeraire and Arkady remained hidden in another valley. “We haven’t the faintest notion where they are keeping him, and if we challenge Fela, he will claim it is all a lie and he has no idea where Tharkay is; and like as not will kill him.

“I suppose Fela must be wary already,” she added. “Those guard-dragons are his, that much is sure enough. They are watching everything we do: they will have noticed Temeraire has been gone more than a day, and have seen Immortalis and Kulingile and Mei flying back and forth as well. If anything, we are giving him all the cause he needs to accuse us of going about and giving more aid and comfort to the rebels, in the meantime.”

“Rebels,” Hammond said slowly, from the chest upon which he sat, “—rebels, of whom we have seen not the least sign, and have no evidence for, but General Fela’s own reports,” and they all regarded him in surprise. “Oh! It is the prettiest arrangement,” he added, answering their growing astonishment, “I wonder I did not guess at it before. The conservative party required some excuse, some argument, to resist an alliance and to undermine Prince Mianning’s growing influence at court. They trumped up this rebellion, General Fela sent in a few false reports—”

“The devil,” Berkley said. “Are you saying there are no damned rebels at all?”

“I dare say there are some number of malcontents, and some quantity of small banditry here and there: enough to make reports plausible,” Hammond said. “But we have not heard a peep of any kind of truly organized force—no rebel army, no real fighting.”

They none of them spoke a moment; the implications hideous: “Good God, Hammond: if it is true, he put that village to the sword without cause,” Laurence said.

“Pray consider the desperate nature of Fela’s situation,” Hammond said. “He might have expected to vanish away a false rebellion
as easily as he had created it, with no such measures required. Yet quite unexpectedly, the crown prince proposed your superceding him in command, with a substantial force and an experienced senior officer to back you. From that moment, he has known the lie of the rebellion could not long be preserved. His only hope is to quickly discredit us, and have General Chu and his force recalled—and he has made excellent headway on that front. But if Prince Mianning had
not
made the suggestion, and we had been sent here alone as the conservatives wished, I am sure he would have been delighted to keep us traipsing about these mountains looking for mythical rebels until the end of days.”

“Doing his best to arrange Laurence’s murder in the meanwhile,” Granby said. “But how are we to prove any of it?”

There was scarcely any hope of their finding Tharkay, or any other evidence, so unfamiliar with the territory as they were; General Fela and his own forces knew it far too well themselves, from having been stationed here for some time. “We must have help,” Laurence said.

Temeraire could not but feel the most dreadful awkwardness, marching coolly past the guard-dragons to General Chu’s tent, and summoning him out of it. Of course Laurence was nominally in command, and he himself as a Celestial technically took precedence over any other breed, but oh! What did that matter when everyone
knew
perfectly well that General Chu was a most senior dragon, a great general, and really meant to be in command; he could feel the outrage of the other dragons’ eyes upon him, and writhed inwardly to be behaving so rudely.

General Chu came out of his pavilion, between the two scarlet dragons whom Fela had appointed his personal honor-guard, and very stiffly bowed his head. “How may I be of service?” he said shortly.

Temeraire did not know how he could have answered; but Laurence
had not the least hesitation. He said in quite a calm voice, “General Chu, have you found any trace of the rebels that the Emperor has commanded us to destroy?”

Chu’s mane bristled. “As yet we have not discovered their base of operations,” he said, even more shortly. “The search continues.”

“Then you would oblige me greatly by coming with us to discuss how we may improve that search,” Laurence said, and nothing more—no explanation, no polite adornment. One of the guard-dragons flattened his own heavy brows, and Temeraire avoided their eyes.

Chu’s eyes narrowed under the forward ridge of his mane. “If I may propose to Your Highness, there is no reason we cannot discuss the matter profitably here,” and indicated with his claw the great maps laid out just inside his pavilion, with clustered markers of red upon them showing the maneuvers of the dragons.

“I prefer to be surveying the territory directly, with my own eyes,” Laurence said. “We will seek out a higher vantage point, if you please. You there, you may keep your places,” he added, when the honor-guard would have risen. “We do not need an escort.” He touched Temeraire’s side; Temeraire was desperately glad to leap aloft and escape the mortification and the cold glares. He hovered just out of ear-shot, pretending not to notice the outraged expressions on the other dragons, and their flattened wings and spines, as General Chu heaved himself into the air and followed.