Naomi Novik - Blood of Tyrants

But the Sui-Riu evidently had no intention of letting them get their bearings back: he had plunged his head back into the water and was inhaling again. He might blast them on the far side, and so sweep more of them into the water, where he would certainly have an advantage, since he could breathe through it: unsporting, except that to be fair he was one against eight.

However, Temeraire could not give him much credit for that: no-one had asked the Sui-Riu to be so unfriendly. Lily had given the most polite warning one could ask for—if she had liked to be similarly nasty, she might have taken the Sui-Riu directly in the eye with her shot. Temeraire worked his lungs as he flew, gathering breath, and even as the Sui-Riu drew himself up out of the water again, Temeraire dived towards him, roaring in full and terrible voice.

The waters of the bay shuddered from the divine wind, the surface going for a moment bowl-like and concave; the Sui-Riu was bowled over onto his side with an immense splash, and his torrent erupted involuntarily and spilled harmless over the water, merely adding more turbulence. But the distance was too great, or else perhaps the water somehow absorbed some of the impact; the Sui-Riu managed to right himself in the water, and did not look so dreadfully injured as did most dragons who had borne the direct brunt of the divine wind. Only a little blood trickled black from his right ear, over scales that were a deep greenish black the color of dry seaweed, and his eye on that side was bloodshot: otherwise he seemed quite all right, and great sharp fins were rising up angrily all over his back, like blades.

But Temeraire was hovering off the shore, now, closer; and Maximus and Lily were righting themselves. The others fell into line behind Lily, taking up their formation-positions. Temeraire did not much like formation-fighting, but one could not deny its tactical usefulness, and the Sui-Riu evidently did not have any difficulty recognizing his increasing disadvantage. Shaking away the last of the effects, he looked up at Temeraire, and his eyes—a great slitted pale grey that looked nearly white—drew thin and narrow.

The Sui-Riu rumbled some remarks in a most angry tone, sounding more like a distant thundercloud than anything else. “I do not have any notion what you are saying,” Temeraire informed him loudly, in Chinese, “but you needn’t complain of us, when you attack people out of nowhere—if you should—”

But as abruptly as he had emerged before, the Sui-Riu was gone: in one smooth motion he plunged beneath the dark murky waters of the bay, clouded even further now by silt and sand raised in their exchange. One long barnacled curve of tail breached the water, and was gone: though Temeraire held position a long time, he did not break the surface again.

The lanterns were coming alight, one after another, all through the house. Laurence could trace the servants moving in waves as the glow spread behind the walls. The sentry at the door was waking with a snorting start and jerking to his feet, blinking around. Laurence for a moment considered: the man was paunchy and sleep-dazed, armed only with a short blade—a quick struggle might see him through—

But the dragon was descending from aloft—the dragons, rather, for there were two immense black shadows against the milky wash of the moonless night, coming into the lamp-light. One, the larger, had wide green eyes that glowed like a cat’s: it was not looking at him presently, but if it could see in the dark, like the Fleur-de-Nuit, nothing could be easier than for the beast to hunt him down while he fumbled over unfamiliar ground in the dark.

Quickly, Laurence turned instead and thrust his small bundle into the ornamental bushes planted against the side of the house, and then went and stood by the door of the house to wait, as though he had been brought there. The sentry looked at him in confusion, but Laurence looked back at him with unmoving face, brazening it out, and the man was in a moment overwhelmed by a sudden flow of servants hurrying out into the garden. Junichiro appeared by Laurence’s elbow.

“What are you doing out here?” the young man demanded, but preoccupied himself did not wait for an answer; instead he seized Laurence by the arm and drew him along with the flow of people. “They have certainly come on your account,” he said, “so you may as well stay here.”

Kaneko was coming out of the house himself, dressed in formal robes; he wore two blades at his belt and came past his servants, who had arrayed themselves in a square as neat as any infantry troop. Two last men were hurrying around the perimeter of a great flagstoned courtyard, lighting lamps all around it, and then they all knelt together as the dragons came descending into the square, Kaneko out ahead of the rest of the party.

The dragons settled themselves neatly upon the ground; the larger, grey in body and something the size of a middle-weight, wore curious pale green silken dressings the color of its eyes wound about its neck and wing-tips and forelegs, which coming loose made graceful arcs about its body like sails spilling their wind. It had not a single man aboard. The smaller dragon, a brilliant yellow beast larger than a Winchester though not up to combat-weight, carried four: of these, the lead gentleman was dressed in elaborate and formal robes bearing signs of some sort of office, and the others were evidently servants who carried boxes and one an armful of scrolls, and preceding him down unfolded a set of steps to enable him to make a more ponderous and imposing descent.

The grey dragon bent its head towards Kaneko while the men dismounted. It spoke to him in the Japanese tongue, and he bowed more deeply and said something back. Laurence caught the name Arikawa out of it, but he saw no women; perhaps these were Lady Arikawa’s emissaries, and he could see nothing to bode well for his future in their cold faces.

There was a little more formal exchange between them, which Laurence could not follow: he was all the more conscious of his utter isolation, of himself as a prisoner among strangers, unable even to pick out a word or to conceive their intentions. The servants were dismissed; the guests and Kaneko went inside the house; Junichiro took him by the arm and drew him along after them. They turned immediately from the entryway into a chamber on the side, whose entire outer wall was slid back and left wide open to face upon the courtyard where the dragons had settled themselves.

The servants brought great kettles of steaming sharp-nosed tea out to bowls laid before the beasts. The official and Kaneko were served afterwards; they drank, making what Laurence assumed from their tone was mere small conversation, until abruptly he was drawn in front of them, and without hesitation or change of demeanor the official addressed him in Chinese and said, “What is your purpose in coming to our nation?”

“Sir,” Laurence said, “I have no purpose but to be restored to my country-men, and my ship if at all possible.”

It was the opening salvo of an interrogation which proceeded despite the hour of the night, and was as frustrating to Laurence as it was to his interlocutor. He could not but be conscious of the impossibility of avowing himself unable to remember his purpose. Better to be thought a liar than a lunatic, he was sure, but unable to confess this truth, he felt every other word hung upon a knife-edge of honor. He did not know why he was here, and therefore could not say with honest confidence that he meant them no injury. What if the Japanese sheltered some French ship, which he pursued?

“I am a shipwreck: I did not choose to be thrown on your shore, and my presence here is the merest accident,” he said again, the best he could do. “And as you have received no declaration of war, from Britain, nor any envoy,” he added, hoping as much was true, “then, sir, I hope you will believe I am not here as your enemy. You surely cannot imagine me intended in any way to be a spy, and His Majesty’s Government does not behave in so underhanded a manner as to attack another nation with no warning or quarrel.”