Naomi Novik - Tongues of Serpents

“I think we must expect to regret you a longer time,” Laurence said. “—there can be very little to call you back to this part of the world anytime soon.”

Tharkay paused, then said, “We spoke some time ago of endeavors which might call you away from it, however. I would have opportunity to make inquiries, if you have decided.”

Laurence did not answer immediately; then he said, “No; thank you, Tenzing. I cannot see my way to it. I am very grateful—”

Tharkay waved this away. “Then I will hope some other occupation finds you; you do not seem likely to me to lie idle.” He drew out a handsomely embossed card from a case in his pocket. “My direction is likely to be, as always, uncertain; but you may write me care of my lawyers: if they cannot find me, they will hold the letters until I have called for them.” He gave Laurence the card; they clasped hands once more and agreed on dinner, the following day, before Tharkay went down the slope away.

“I certainly hope that he is right,” Temeraire said, with a little sigh; privateering did seem to him a splendid occupation, and it was a great pity Laurence felt it was not quite the thing. It did not seem to him that anything of interest should ever happen here, nor fair that everyone but himself and Laurence should go.

Tharkay and Laurence were away at dinner the next afternoon when the gunfire erupted, late in the evening. Temeraire had just woken to enjoy the cooler hours, and had been contemplating whether he might call it worth the effort to fly a little distance to the more shaded water-hole and have a cold drink; as the crack and whistle of musketry went off, Kulingile opened his eyes and sat up.

“Is it time to fight the serpents?” he inquired hopefully: his voice had not grown lower, but a great deal more resonant in an odd, echoing manner, so that when he spoke it seemed as though several people were talking at once, saying the very same thing.

“Of course it is not time to fight the serpents,” Caesar said, peering down the slope, “my captain would have come for me, and my crew. There are men fighting one another: perhaps it is duels.”

“It is not duels,” Temeraire said, “no one fights duels at night, and with dozens of people against one another; one fights them at dawn. I do not see why there should be so much disorder in this town, and why Laurence must always be in the midst of it, somewhere I cannot see him; oh! they are firing again.”

There were a great many men in uniforms in the street, struggling now against one another with bayonets and wrestling, their rifles held like staves and battering away. Temeraire rose and peered down the hill anxiously, looking to see if he could make Laurence out anywhere at all in the melee, but his brown coat would have been difficult to see in better light than they had, so that Temeraire did not see him was no comfort; if he had seen Laurence, he might at least have had the opportunity of snatching him away to safety.

“I am going to go down there,” Temeraire said, decisively, “—no, Roland, I cannot wait; plainly Laurence might be anywhere, and perhaps they will stop if I should land among them—I will only knock over that low building, which is very rickety-looking anyway, and perhaps the one beside it.”

“You are not to go anywhere,” Rankin said, panting up the hill, in his heartlessly plain evening clothes and great disarray, with Blincoln and his second lieutenant behind him. “Mr. Fellowes! You will rig Caesar out at once; it is a rebellion. You are to remain here,” he added to Temeraire. “Laurence is in no danger whatsoever: they are advancing on the governor’s mansion, and nowhere near the inn where he was dining.”

“As though I were likely to take your word for it,” Temeraire said scornfully, “or listen to you; I am not under your command, and if someone is rebelling, who is it, and why?”

“That,” Rankin snapped, “is none of your concern; if you do mean to go blundering in, and likely crush Laurence yourself in reckless abandon, by all means do so, but you will keep out of our way. Caesar, does all lie well? That breast-band does not look secure to me, Mr. Fellowes, you will see to it.”

“It is a little loose there over the shoulder, as well,” Caesar reported, puffing out his chest tremendously, and then Demane said, “I don’t see why we should—ow!”

Roland had kicked him soundly in the shin, and as he bent towards it caught him by the ear, twisting it painfully. “Don’t be an ass,” she said, “and don’t you yowl at me, either,” she added, when Kulingile had reared up his head in bristling protest. “It is for his good, and yours.”

“Let go!” Demane hissed back at her, but she was managing to dance around him and keep hold, so he could not easily wrench loose without hurting himself worse. “Why should we let him decide, who is ruling the colony and everyone in it—”

“We shouldn’t,” she hissed, “but you aren’t the son of an earl with twenty thousand a year and half the Lords in his pocket; if you look a rebel, someone will just shoot you, you ass, and not bother with trial about it, either; you haven’t a scrap of influence. And anyway,” she added, “if he hasn’t any business deciding, you have less; you don’t even know who it is rebelling, or why: and I dare say they are all just drunk.”

“They are certainly not drunk,” Temeraire said, “for they have got off three volleys: and it is no joke to reload a gun even when one is sober; it was the greatest difficulty for our artillery company to manage it, with seven men to a cannon, so it must be even more trouble for one person with a musket, it seems to me; and I do wish I knew who they were—”

“It is the New South Wales Corps,” Lieutenant Forthing said, panting; he had dashed up the hill. “Mr. Laurence is coming, Temeraire; he says to tell you he is quite well, and you are not to come in search of him.”

“Where is he, pray?” Temeraire said, still a little wary; Laurence, he knew, thought a little better of Forthing after their journey, but Temeraire did not see that he had done anything of particular value; he would much rather have had Ferris back, or perhaps his midwingman Martin; except of course Martin had given them the cut direct, after the trial.

It was grown too dark to see, but there was a lantern coming up the hill, and then Caesar said, “All lies well, Captain Rankin,” very satisfied with himself, and stood waiting while the company of officers began to go aboard with their rifles and their pistols, and as they mounted, he added aside to Temeraire and Kulingile, in a tone of unpardonable condescension, “Well, fellows, we will settle this in a trice, and be back; pray don’t trouble yourselves over it.”

“I do not see why we do not get any fighting, and you do?” Kulingile said queryingly, which Temeraire felt was a remarkably appropriate question. “I have been very sleepy, but no one can sleep when there are guns going. And if it is the New South Wales Corps, have they not been giving us those sheep? and the cows?”

“Well,” Temeraire said judiciously, “so far as that goes, Governor Macquarie did provide us with some cattle.” One ought, he felt, be scrupulously fair in such circumstances. “But he does mean to start a war with China, which no one would like; Laurence,” he said, swinging his head around, “I am so very relieved to see you: I had meant to go down, but Forthing came sooner. We are discussing whether we ought help Governor Macquarie, or the Corps, who are rebelling again.”

“Yes,” Laurence said, grimly, “—Roland, my glass.”

The battle, if one might call it that, had gone all the distance to the governor’s mansion now, and seemed so far as Temeraire could see it to be quite reduced in scope; there was very little fighting, and the soldiers who had stood in the way now seemed to be walking with the rest, except for the small company of Marines, who had fled. There was singing going on, and a great many of the townspeople had come out with lanterns and also flagons and bottles: one could see the light shining on the glass as they drank and cheered, and pistols were shot off into the air.