Naomi Novik - Tongues of Serpents

Iskierka snorted, disdainful, “As if anyone would wish to stay in this wretched country, where there is nothing fine to eat, and the only battles one can get, one is covered in stinking fish. No; and if you ask me, you are a great gaby to stay,” she added. “Granby says we will likely go from Madras to Rio, instead of home, and have a splendid battle against those African dragons who ran you off before. I am sure we will do better.”

Temeraire flattened his ruff, from equal parts annoyance and envy; Madras—he had never seen Madras, or any part of India, although many pleasant things were always coming from there; and he understood all of Brazil to be thoroughly littered with gold, from what sailors said. Nor could Temeraire have any enthusiasm for the coming battle: as he understood they would only be dropping bombs, from aloft; and while he would be perfectly happy to clear away the serpents, who had proven to be so wretchedly difficult and stupid besides, Laurence thought it should certainly mean war with China.

But there was no choice: when the Allegiance had gone, and the latest frigate, and those of the merchant ships whose draught was too deep to bring them into the safety of the shallows, they would attack. Laurence also was making his farewells. “Pray give my best to Harcourt,” Laurence said, and then belatedly added, “—I mean to Mrs. Riley, of course; I hope you will find her much recovered, and the child well.”

“I suppose he will be talking by now,” Riley said, “if he hasn’t been dropped from dragon-back mid-air; I shan’t be surprised to hear it if he has.” He took the letters which Laurence had prepared, and those which Sipho had taken down for Temeraire.

“Captain Riley,” Temeraire said, “I know you are not very fond of each other, but if you please, I hope you will tell Lily that I send my regards, also; and she is very welcome to visit, she and Maximus, if they should ever choose to.”

“Oh,” Riley said, a little dismally; Temeraire did have to allow that Lily had been a little unreasonable towards him, but then, in a way one might say it was Riley’s fault that poor Harcourt had suffered so much, with her egg. “Yes; certainly I will convey your wishes.”

“I call it damned stupid and a waste besides,” Granby was saying to Laurence meanwhile, low, but not very low. “To leave you here, and with Rankin to command the covert; if one can even call it a covert when there are three dragons in it, and two as likely to throw him in the ocean as obey him.”

“I wish him very great joy of the command,” Laurence said dryly. “It is not likely to demand much initiative, and he may as well be here as anywhere; he cannot do very much harm in the position, and he is welcome to the politicking. In all honesty, we would be at more of a standstill if Demane were confirmed in rank; from what we have seen of Governor Macquarie, I cannot imagine he would be in the least inclined to listen to a stripling, quite apart from his birth.”

“As far as that goes, Demane is as much an officer as he is a fish; so I don’t know you are worse off with Rankin, either,” Granby said. “No; but it is still a crime to leave you here to rot along with him, and I expect he will make a nuisance of himself; I don’t think he knows how to otherwise. And a prime heavy-weight,” he added, with still more frustration, “with not a prayer of getting him off the continent when the Allegiance has gone.”

Kulingile had outgrown Caesar a short way into their journey, to Temeraire’s private satisfaction, but it seemed to him Kulingile did not need to continue growing at such a pace now, when it plainly consumed so much of the available stores. Even if Iskierka was going away, that still did not leave them with so very many cows, and the hunting grew a good deal more tedious when anyone was taking half-a-dozen kangaroos at a time; soon they should have to fly several hours afield to find herds which could be culled.

“And you have surely heard several of the officers say that there is no use for a really big heavy-weight here in this colony,” Temeraire had said to him, when they had at last returned to the valley, and Kulingile had insisted on a portion of cattle just as large as those which Temeraire and Iskierka had commanded.

But Kulingile remained unimpressed by the hints which Temeraire dropped, and continued both to eat and to grow. “Of course he will not outgrow Maximus,” Temeraire murmured to Dorset interrogatively, when the second cow had vanished, and Kulingile was eyeing the rest of the herd with a sad, speculative gaze; Temeraire did not really see why Kulingile should outgrow him , either, but one did not wish to sound self-centered, or as though one would mind any such thing: it did not signify, of course, if one were a Celestial, even if Kulingile was also coming into a quite handsome pattern of golden scales, as he grew.

“Very likely he will,” Dorset said, writing in his log-book; he had been making a record of everything which Kulingile ate, and doing a great deal of measuring with his knotted string, at least until Kulingile had grown so large that only his talons might so be measured in any reasonable amount of time.

Dorset added, “We will know he has begun to reach his growth when he ceases to be quite so rounded: that is when the body will have overtaken the air-sacs, and so begin to approach the limit.” But it was now more than a week later, and Kulingile still had a tendency to roly-poly, and if he was not quite as long as Temeraire, it would have been a little difficult to say he was decidedly smaller, if one should compare their shadows on the ground.

MacArthur was certainly very impressed by his appearance when he came up to the promontory that afternoon, presumably to speak with Laurence; but Laurence had gone down to the Allegiance to dine with Riley and Granby one final time before their departure, and so there was no one else to meet him. MacArthur paused at the edge of the hill, and asked Temeraire, “So this is the new one, I gather? Something prodigious, I see, for a few months out of the shell; he will have your measure if he goes on a little longer this way.”

“I suppose, if one is only concerned with weight,” Temeraire said, a little repressively.

“Ha ha,” MacArthur said, although Temeraire saw nothing very funny in it. “And does he have a captain?”

“He is mine,” Demane said, belligerently, having already raised his head to listen from where he and Roland were sketching out the proposed plan of attack upon the serpents, and arguing over its merits; Demane was inclined to dislike it only because Rankin had proposed it, and so was finding fault, where Roland had said impatiently, “Yes, he is a scrub, what has that got to do with fighting? If Laurence said to jump in the water and fight them, would you like to do it?”

MacArthur eyed Demane more than a little doubtfully, and then said something to him which did not make any sense: it was a little like the aboriginal languages which Temeraire had now heard bits of, mixed together with a great deal of English peculiarly pronounced. “What?” Demane said, justly baffled.

“He thinks you’re one of their natives!” Sipho said, without looking up from his book. “We are from Africa, and we aren’t stupid, either; you needn’t talk like you are babbling to a child.”

“Well, that is handy,” MacArthur said. “It is a shame more of you black fellows cannot speak better English.”

“It is a shame you can’t speak better Chinese, too,” Sipho said, not quite under his breath, to which MacArthur said, “Why, I cannot say I would mind it these days,” and laughed again, ha ha, and said to Demane, “Now then, how did that come about: you are never an officer?”