Naomi Novik: Empire of Ivory

“Oh, very; I am quite at home,” Tharkay said. “It is some time since I was last in Britain, but I was tolerably familiar with the Court of Session, then,” nodding across the square at Parliament House, where the court met: Scotland’s highest civil court, and a notorious pit of broken hopes, endless dragging suits, and wrangling over technicalities and estates; presently deserted by all its solicitors, judges, and suitors alike, and only a scattering of harried papers blown up against Temeraire’s side like white patches, relics of old settlements. Tharkay’s father had been a man of property, Laurence knew; Tharkay had none; the son of a Nepalese woman perhaps would have been at some disadvantage in the British courts, Laurence supposed, and any irregularity in his claims easily exploited.

At least he did not look at all enthusiastic to be home; if home he considered it, and Laurence said, “I hope,” tentatively, and tried awkwardly to suggest that Tharkay might consider extending his contract, when they had settled such delicate matters as payment for those services already rendered: Tharkay had been paid for guiding them along the old silk trading routes from China, but since then he had recruited the ferals to their cause, which demanded a bounty beyond Laurence’s private means. And his services could by no means be easily dispensed with now, not until the ferals were settled somehow into the Corps, Tharkay being, apart from Temeraire, almost the only one who could manage more than a few words of their odd, inflected language. “I would gladly speak to Admiral Lenton at Dover, if you would not object,” Laurence added; he did not at all mean to discuss any such irregular question with whichever notable was commanding here, after the treatment which they had so far received.

Tharkay only shrugged, noncommittal, and said, “Your messenger grows anxious,” nodding to where the young runner was fidgeting unhappily at the corner of the square, waiting for Laurence to come along.

The boy took him the short distance up the hill to the castle gates; from there Laurence was escorted to the admiral’s office by an officious red-coated Marine, their path winding around to the headquarters building through the medieval stone courtyards, empty and free from hurry in the early-morning dimness. The doors were opened, and he went in stiffly, straight-shouldered; his face had set into disapproving lines, cold and rigid. “Sir,” he said, eyes fixed at a point upon the wall; and only then glanced down, and said, surprised, “Admiral Lenton?”

“Laurence; yes. Sit, sit down.” Lenton dismissed the guard, and the door closed upon them and the musty, book-lined room; the Admiral’s desk was nearly clear, but for a single small map, a handful of papers. Lenton sat for a moment silently. “It is damned good to see you,” he said at last. “Very good to see you indeed. Very good.”

Laurence was very much shocked at his appearance. In the year since their last meeting, Lenton seemed to have aged ten: hair gone entirely white, and a vague, rheumy look in his eyes; his jowls hung slack. “I hope I find you well, sir,” Laurence said, deeply sorry, no longer wondering why Lenton had been transferred north to Edinburgh, the quieter post; he wondered only what illness might have so ravaged him, and who had been made commander at Dover in his place.

“Oh…” Lenton waved his hand, fell silent. “I suppose you have not been told anything,” he said, after a moment. “No, that is right; we agreed we could not risk word getting out.”

“No, sir,” Laurence said, anger kindling afresh. “I have heard nothing, and been told nothing; with our allies asking me daily for word of the Corps, until there was no more use in asking.”

He had given his own personal assurances to the Prussian commanders; he had sworn that the Aerial Corps would not fail them, that the promised company of dragons, which might have turned the tide against Napoleon, in this last disastrous campaign, would arrive at any moment. He and Temeraire had stayed and fought in their place when the dragons did not arrive, risking their own lives and those of his crew in an increasingly hopeless cause; but the dragons had never come.

Lenton did not immediately answer, but sat nodding to himself, murmuring. “Yes, that is right, of course.” He tapped a hand on the desk, looked at some papers without reading them, a portrait of distraction.

Laurence added more sharply, “Sir, I can hardly believe you would have lent yourself to so treacherous a course, and one so terribly shortsighted; Napoleon’s victory was by no means assured, if the twenty promised dragons had been sent.”

“What?” Lenton looked up. “Oh, Laurence, there was no question of that. No, none at all. I am sorry for the secrecy, but as for not sending the dragons, that called for no decision. There were no dragons to send.”

Victoriatus heaved his sides out and in, a gentle, measured pace. His nostrils were wide and red, a thick flaking crust around the rims, and a dried pink foam lingered about the corners of his mouth. His eyes were closed, but after every few breaths they would open a little, dull and unseeing with exhaustion; he gave a rasping, hollow cough that flecked the ground before him with blood; and subsided once again into the half-slumber that was all he could manage. His captain, Richard Clark, was lying on a cot beside him: unshaven, in filthy linen, an arm flung up to cover his eyes and the other hand resting on the dragon’s foreleg; he did not move, even when they approached.

After a few moments, Lenton touched Laurence on the arm. “Come, enough; let’s away.” He turned slowly aside, leaning heavily upon a cane, and took Laurence back up the green hill to the castle. The corridors, as they returned to his offices, seemed no longer peaceful but hushed, sunk in irreparable gloom.

Laurence refused a glass of wine, too numb to think of refreshment. “It is a sort of consumption,” Lenton said, looking out the windows that faced onto the covert yard; Victoriatus and twelve other great beasts lay screened from one another by the ancient windbreaks, piled branches and stones grown over with ivy.

“How widespread—?” Laurence asked.

“Everywhere,” Lenton said. “Dover, Portsmouth, Middlesbrough. The breeding grounds in Wales and Halifax; Gibraltar; everywhere the couriers went on their rounds; everywhere.” He turned away from the windows and took his chair again. “We were inexpressibly stupid; we thought it was only a cold, you see.”

“But we had word of that before we had even rounded the Cape of Good Hope, on our journey east,” Laurence said, appalled. “Has it lasted so long?”

“In Halifax it started in September of the year five,” Lenton said. “The surgeons think now it was the American dragon, that big Indian fellow: he was kept there, and then the first dragons to fall sick here were those who had shared the transport with him to Dover; then it began in Wales when he was sent to the breeding grounds there. He is perfectly hearty, not a cough or a sneeze; very nearly the only dragon left in England who is, except for a handful of hatchlings we have tucked away in Ireland.”

“You know we have brought you another twenty,” Laurence said, taking a brief refuge in making his report.

“Yes, these fellows from where, Turkestan?” Lenton said, willing to follow. “Did I understand your letter correctly; they were brigands?”

“I would rather say jealous of their territory,” Laurence said. “They are not very pretty, but there is no malice in them; though what use twenty dragons can be, to cover all England—” He stopped. “Lenton, surely something can be done—must be done,” he said.

Lenton only shook his head briefly. “The usual remedies did some good, at the beginning,” he said. “Quieted the coughing, and so forth. They could still fly, if they did not have much appetite; and colds are usually such trifling things with them. But it lingered on so long, and after a while the possets seemed to lose their effect—some began to grow worse—”