Blood of Tyrants. Naomi Novik
the Royal Navy. And I have not the least notion how I have come to be here, except if my ship has suffered some accident, which God forbid.”
Laurence did not much know what else he said afterwards. He supposed they saw his confusion and distress, for the questions stopped, and a servant was called to bring in a tray: a flask and small porcelain cups. His host filled one and gave it to him; Laurence took it and drank blindly, glad for the intensity: strong as brandy though light on the tongue. His cup was refilled promptly, and he drank again; the cup was small enough to be a single swallow. But he put it down afterwards. “I beg your pardon,” he said, feeling acutely that he had lost control of himself, and all the more awkward in the face of their carefully polite failure to notice it. “I beg your pardon,” he said, more strongly. “Sir, to answer your question, I cannot tell you how I came to be here: I must have been swept overboard, is the only possible answer. As for purpose, I have none; I have neither business nor friends in this part of the world.”
He hesitated, yet there was no help for it; he could not help but recognize himself utterly a beggar. Pride should have to be sacrificed. “I am sorry to be so bold as to make any further claims on your generosity,” he said, “when you have already been more than kind, but I would be glad—I would be very glad indeed for your assistance in making my way to Nagasaki, where I may be reunited with my ship, or find another to return me to England.”
But his host was silent. Finally he said, “You are yet too ill for the rigors of a long journey, I think. For now, permit me to invite you to enjoy the hospitality of my house. If there is anything you require for your comfort, Junichiro will see it is done.”
All that was courteous, all that was kind, and yet it was a dismissal. Junichiro silently moved to hover behind Laurence at his elbow, plainly waiting for him to leave. Laurence hesitated, but he could not much argue: there was a low hollow thumping in his head, like the sound of bare heels coming down on a deck overhead, and the liquor already had thrown a further haze over his sight.
He followed Junichiro out and down the hall, back to the small chamber where he had awoken. Junichiro drew open the door and stood waiting; his face remained hard and unfriendly, and he fixed his eyes past Laurence like a grande dame giving the cut direct, though he said with cold hauteur, once Laurence had ducked inside, “Send for me if you should require anything.”
Laurence looked about the chamber: the empty floor covered with straw mats, the bare and featureless walls, the silence of it; both the siren’s promise of immediate rest, and confinement. “My liberty,” he said, grimly, half under his breath.
“Be grateful for your life,” Junichiro said with sudden venom, “which you have only by my master’s benevolence. Perhaps he will think better of it.”
He all but hurled the door shut, the frame rattling on its track, and Laurence could only stare after his shadow disappearing on the other side of the translucent wall.
The green, glassy wave broke against the shoals but flung itself rushing on even as it crumpled. The cold foam washed ferociously up Temeraire’s hindquarters and left a fresh line of seaweed and splinters clinging to his hide as it finally fell back, exhausted. A low groaning came from the Potentate’s hull where she strained against the rocks, pinned and struggling; all around them the ocean stood wide and empty and grey, and the distant curve of land was only a smudge in the distance.
“You may say anything you like,” Temeraire said, flatly, “but I do not care in the least. I will go alone, if I must, whether or not anyone will come and help me.”
“Oh, Lord,” Granby muttered, half under his breath; Captain Berkley, who was clinging to a stanchion to keep his balance on the badly slanted deck, did not bother to keep his own voice low, but bellowed up, “Listen, you mad beast, you don’t suppose any of us like it better than you do?”
“I am quite sure I should like it less than anyone, if Laurence were dead,” Temeraire said, “but he is not: he is certainly not dead. Of course I am going to go and look for him: I think it outside of everything for you to try and persuade me to any other course.”
He did not bother to keep the reproach from his voice, and the anger. “And I do not see why you will all waste time arguing with me, when you had much better be helping me to organize a search: he cannot come to us, as long as we are still fixed out here in this useless position.”
He was himself in an equally unpleasant position: perched awkwardly upon the long line of jagged black rocks, with his hindquarters half in the ocean, and peering over onto the dragondeck at the aviators. The Potentate had grounded during the storm: a terrific crash which had nearly sent all the dragons sliding off the deck into the ocean and tipped the ship up and over her ends.
There had been no time to think of anything but the mad scrambling effort to untangle themselves from the storm-chains in time, Laurence throwing himself up to where little Nitidus was pinned beneath three knots, frantically sawing them open and letting him at last wriggle free, so the rest of them had room enough to burst loose while the chains and tarpaulins slid down over the prow, into the churning ocean.
“When you are loose, take hold the anchor-chains at stern and bow!” Laurence had roared to him, before climbing up. “You must hold her back and off her beam-ends, else this cross-ocean will pound her apart on the shoals,” and as soon as Temeraire had managed to break free he had done it: he and Maximus and Kulingile all working mightily together, straining against the anchor-chains and every rope that Nitidus and Dulcia could bring up to them, to keep the ship upright while the wind shrieked and tried to batter her and them against the rocks. And Temeraire had borne the brunt of it, for he could better maneuver than either of them: though it was quite impossible to hover properly in the storm, at least he could keep to his position more or less, without being flung down into the waves.
No-one had said a word to him, all that time—no-one had mentioned that Laurence was nowhere to be seen, and likely carried overboard with the chains—until he had finally been able to land exhausted on the deck, and look about, and Roland had slowly come and told him softly that Laurence was lost.
Temeraire did not mind admitting that it had been a very dreadful moment, and he had indulged himself in imagining consequences as dire as any of them. He had gone and swept frantically over all the neighboring ocean, every moment a torment as he found not the least sign of the tarpaulins or Laurence anywhere. But he had forced himself to stop searching empty waves—it had already been several hours, and Laurence would certainly not have stayed in the water, but would have struck right out for land, sensibly—and had gone back to the ship to consult maps to determine where best to find Laurence, and organize a better rescue.
It had not occurred to him that anyone would be so ridiculous as to throw some business of politics in his way: this nonsense of Japan being closed to foreign shipping, and unreasonably intolerant of visitors. Of course Hammond might be counted on to try offering him objections on such flimsy grounds, but Temeraire would have thought better of Granby and Captain Harcourt to lend themselves to it, or any of the other dragons’ captains.
Temeraire was trying to be just: he did not hold it against anyone, much, that they had not noticed Laurence missing in the great confusion—although he had been trying to save the entire ship, and others had not been in quite so crucial a position; someone else might have looked sooner—“But I do not think it unreasonably selfish of me,” he said, “that now the others should keep on without me, until I have found Laurence. And I will certainly go at once.”
The storm was gone and the winds had died down, and Maximus and Kulingile could take it in turn to keep the ship from being smashed upon the shoals: Kulingile was aloft even now, doing his turn alone, and the ship was perfectly well. It did not signify if a few waves came over the side; sailors had to be prepared to get a little wet, now and again.
“I do not even mean to be gone very long,” Temeraire said. “I am only asking to take perhaps twenty men, or thirty, and fly to the nearest shore and begin a search: certainly we will find him very soon. Particularly if we should make inquiries amongst the populace.”
“We must do nothing of the sort,”