Naomi Novik - Crucible of Gold

Temeraire was determined not to be difficult; he had seen Granby’s crimson cheek, and Laurence should certainly have no such cause to blush for him, even if Temeraire disliked the chains extremely, more than Iskierka did, and therefore had far better right to ask some return.

“But I am not going to kick up a fuss, and make difficulties for everyone and the poor sailors, who will be working all the storm,” Temeraire said, although he was sorry a moment later to have silenced himself a little too early: he would very much have preferred to have a proper meal, cooked through, but instead he could see a cow being hoisted out from the fore hatch, and the ordinary slaughtering-tubs were out on deck, even as the first spatters of rain came down and rattled in them tinnily.

“And for that matter,” he added sulkily, as the meat was served out, “Laurence has more right than Granby to wear finery; after all he is a prince and a captain, both, and Granby even has less seniority. So if Laurence does not choose to always be going about in his best robes,” which Temeraire could understand: one did not wish to risk damage to anything so handsome unnecessarily, “I do not see that Granby is at all right to do otherwise.”

Kulingile raised his head and put in, “Demane is a prince also,” which Temeraire did not think was quite true, although he did recall Admiral Roland saying something of the sort to some fellow from the Admiralty who had objected to Demane and Sipho being his runners; but certainly it was not as true as for Laurence, who had been adopted with a great deal of formal ceremony. “And he does not wear anything particularly fine.”

Iskierka bristled and hissed steam from her spikes. “Granby has more seniority, if one counts years as an aviator, and I am sure I cannot see any reason he should not be a prince, too, someday very soon.” With this feeble rejoinder she put her head beneath her wing.

The rain had begun falling in earnest, an hour later; Iskierka, sheltered from the wind between them, was securely asleep and jetting out small puffs of steam regularly so that the drops collected upon the tarpaulin and set it sticking clammily to Temeraire’s back. The raw cow sat unpleasantly in his stomach, and he was just contemplating whether it was worth sending Gerry for Gong Su, to perhaps brew him a bowl of tea, when Kulingile put his head over Iskierka’s back and whispered, “Temeraire?”

“Yes?” Temeraire said, rather unhappily concluding that the wind and rain would spoil the tea before he could enjoy it, and then he should have wasted a bowl of their small supply: it was too dear for Laurence to buy in the quantities which Temeraire would have liked to drink.

“ Ought Demane wear something more fine?” Kulingile asked, with an anxious note.

“Oh—” Temeraire said, and struggled with warring impulses, but justice decided him: he could not be reconciled to losing Demane and would have been very glad to have him back, but it would have been the meanest sort of trick to mislead Kulingile if he intended to look after Demane properly.

“Certainly one might expect the captain of a dragon of note to present a particularly handsome appearance, when the occasion demands,” Temeraire said, therefore. “I will venture to say, he would do well with a better coat, at least, and he ought to have gold bars as Laurence and Granby do; you see that no-one thinks him a proper captain, without them.”

“But where am I to get such things?” Kulingile said, and with a great rush of generosity Temeraire said, “Well, I will ask Laurence for you, as I am not quite certain; but if we were to take a prize,” he could not help a wistful note in his voice, “and had shares, you would be in funds and could purchase anything you liked with them.”

“Iskierka has many prizes, but we haven’t?” Kulingile said, interrogatively.

“That,” Temeraire said, “is only because she has been put in the way of them, by luck; you may be sure if ever a prize offered, I should certainly be equal to taking it, and I dare say,” he added in fairness, “when you have been in a few actions, you should be sure of doing so as well; as long as you do not let yourself be shot.”

“I don’t think I should care for being shot,” Kulingile said, and shook his head as a wave came rousing over the bow and went sheeting over them, cold straight through. “I don’t care for this, either,” he added.

“No,” Temeraire agreed, hunching water off his shoulders, and huddled back down as the ship went bounding into a trench, a glassy wall of ocean rising sharply ahead.

The Allegiance was by no means the vessel one would choose for riding out a typhoon. “A wallowing bow-heavy tub with more sail than sea-sense; I would as soon cut my throat as try and make her mind,” Laurence remembered hearing Riley himself say of her several years before, when the two of them had watched from the rail of the dear old Reliant as the transport attempted awkwardly to maneuver her way into Portsmouth: neither of them dreaming, at the time, they should ever be upon her in their present circumstances. Laurence had then six years of seniority on the post-list,and with an influential and political family and a record of distinction was marching steadily towards his admiral’s flag, destined only for the most plum assignments; Riley his protégé and second lieutenant, with reason to hope for his own ship in the course of another five years with Laurence’s own influence behind him.

That influence eradicated, Riley had been glad enough to take the Allegiance when she had been offered him. Now, of course, no more such criticism was to be heard from him or even tolerated in his presence, but it was not to be denied that her only virtue was in being almost too large to sink, which in the present circumstances felt more a gauntlet thrown to the elements, a challenge they looked all too determined to meet. Laurence recalled with no fondness their last experience of a serious blow: three days endlessly laboring their way up the crowded swells, doubting every moment whether the ship should reach the crest in time.

And though Riley had knocked some seamanship into all but the worst of the landsmen and gaol-birds, during the passage to New South Wales, there were a great many of the worst: dragon transports were not prized assignments, and Riley had not sufficient influence to preserve his best men from being pillaged away by senior captains. Laurence could not observe the workings of the resultant crew with anything like satisfaction; and yet he could do nothing to amend it but keep himself to the dragondeck or his cabin, containing any impulse to interfere.

“They have matters well in hand, I assure you,” he said to Mrs. Pemberton that afternoon, remarks addressed half to himself, and regarded his cold dinner without enthusiasm by the dimmed light which filtered in through the windows: it was deeply foreign to sit to his meat while the ship’s existence rose and fell without him.

But the storm did not run three days: it lingered for five, following them across the ocean as if by malice, without a single break in the weather long enough to sleep, and with a great many long enough to give them false hope that here, at last, had come an end. As the thicker darkness came to mark the night of the fourth day, and a fresh icy howling of wind swept over them from the south, Laurence went to Riley, who stood haggard and bloodshot by the wheel, and shouted in his ear, “Tom, do you let me send Lord Purbeck to sleep, and I will second you; when he is rested he may spell you in turn.”

Riley nodded after a moment, dully; when Laurence went to him, Purbeck did not say a word to argue but only stumbled away half-asleep already. Laurence did not know the men very well: there was more separation than one might imagine possible aboard a single vessel between the aviators and the sailors, none of whom liked very well to share their ship with dragons. But he knew the Allegiance well enough by now to direct them, and pantomime served better than shouts, with the wind yelling in all their ears at once.