Tongues of Serpents (11 page)

“I suggest you do not concern yourselves until the event,” Tharkay said, “if it should arise,” and shrugged when Rankin, to Laurence’s private surprise, made no objections either to the project or to Granby’s assertion of rank. “Bligh’s support was desirable to him when he thought you might try to deny him the egg,” Tharkay said. “Now he can only gain very little and risk much by committing himself; I imagine he is perfectly satisfied to have you provide him a convenient excuse to withdraw, particularly when Granby must soon depart and restore his precedence.”

Laurence could of course not look upon the expedition with anything like pleasure, save the meager sort involved in escaping a worse outcome. There was nothing attractive in the prospect of shepherding
a gang of convicts, and a month in Rankin’s company would have been a most effective punishment in quarters less confined than a small encampment; for insult to add upon these injuries, he might also expect the hostility of the rest of the aviators.

“I know they have made clods of themselves, but you had better have at least one officer,” Granby said, scratching out a haphazard list of the aviators on the back of a napkin, in his shipboard cabin, as he chose which men to assign to Temeraire and to Iskierka, as temporary crews. Laurence of course had been stripped of his subordinates with his rank, and Iskierka had left her own back in Britain when she had decamped without permission to follow them, taking only Granby. “Will you take Forthing?”

“Temeraire has taken him a little in dislike, I find,” Laurence said.

“Yes, I know,” Granby said. “I should like to give Forthing a chance to make it up with him; otherwise we will have a job of it to persuade Temeraire to let him make a try for one of the eggs. Not that Forthing is any less a clod than the rest, but at least he is a competent clod. Most of the rest are the flotsam of the Corps as much as the eggs are. That fellow Blincoln is pleased with himself if he manages to round up half-a-dozen men to put away harness in good order; and I suppose he may as well be, because it don’t happen very often.”

Laurence nodded. “We will take Fellowes and Dorset, of course; and Roland and Demane can manage the rest, I expect,” he said. “We ought not take more men than necessary; there can be no need to burden the dragons.”

“I hope,” Tharkay said, “that I may form one of your party, as well, if it is not inconvenient.”

They looked at him with surprise. After a moment, Laurence said, “Certainly, if you like,” forcibly repressing his curiosity; Granby said, “But Lord above, whyever for? We will end with pickaxing our way through solid rock for a month in the worst heat of summer, and there is not a blessed soul out there to be found: unless we see some of the natives, and with three dragons I am pretty sure we won’t.”

Tharkay paused, and then said quietly, “You will be surveying first, from aloft; if there is a route in use, that will offer the best chance of seeing it.”

“If there were a route in use, we shouldn’t have to build one,” Granby said.

“I am not expecting to find a road suitable for general use,” Tharkay said. “A mule-track at most, I should think.”

“But—” Laurence said, and only barely restrained himself; Granby also had stopped, with an open mouth: but it was too plain Tharkay did not choose to volunteer more; he might easily have done so. “Oh, if you like, then,” Granby said awkwardly, after a moment, looking at Laurence.

“We should be glad of your company,” Laurence said, with a bow, and only later, privately to Temeraire, expressed his confusion.

“Maybe he is looking for the smugglers,” Temeraire said, unconcernedly, nibbling up another portion of sheep stuffed with raisins and grains: MacArthur had sent another present that morning, letting no grass grow. Laurence stared. “Well, if someone has a secret road and has not said anything to anyone about it,” Temeraire offered, having swallowed, “it stands to reason they must be hiding it for cause; and you were just telling me of all these goods from China which are coming in.”

“It would be a very peculiar way to bring goods into a port city,” Laurence said, doubtfully, but he recalled Tharkay had engaged himself in service to the directors of the East India Company: at Maden’s request, he might well have undertaken such a task, even if it did not seem a likely explanation for his wishing to accompany their party.

“But anyone could think of searching the ships and the dockyards, to catch them,” Temeraire said, and Laurence after a little more consideration had to acknowledge that if the intention was ultimately to ship the goods on to England, the arrangement was ideal: slip the goods into the markets unsuspected, and then any legitimate captain might openly purchase them and carry them onward.

“They must be landing them in a convenient bay, then, somewhere further up the coast,” Laurence said, “and taking them around by land; but it would be a most circuitous route, through unsettled and dangerous countryside.”

“There is nothing very dangerous when there is nothing but kangaroos about,” Temeraire said dismissively.

They decamped in accord with Granby’s fondest wishes, the very next morning, with all the speed and disorder usual to the Aerial Corps and
more when traveling so light: the bulk of their baggage was made of simple pickaxes and hammers and shovels, instead of bombshells and gunpowder, and the few tents which would be their shelter. The mountains were richly green despite the summer, even seen from a distance; they might rely on finding sufficient water without trying to carry very much of it as supply, and with a few sacks of biscuit and barrels of salt pork they were ready to depart.

The work gang had been assembled with equal haste: some dozen convicts, having been promised their liberty in exchange for this one service, were herded with difficulty up to the promontory and thence into Temeraire’s belly-rigging. They were an odd, ill-favored assortment of men, for the most part thin and leathery, with a peculiar similarity to their faces perhaps born of suffering and their preferred mode of consolation: fine traceworks of broken red capillaries about the base of their noses, and eyes shot through with blood.

There were a few men who looked a little more suited to the work which lay ahead: a Jonas Green, who might himself have been cut none-too-neatly out of rock, with bulk in his shoulders and his arms; he alone of the convicts was not drunk when they came up to the promontory. A Robert Maynard was rather more fat than substantial, and no one could have accused
him
of abstinence, but he had reportedly a little skill at stonemasonry, and his hands showed the evidence: callused hard as iron and large out of all proportion, thick-fingered.

“You had better not mistake him,” MacArthur said, handing over the manifest of men. “Transported for pickpocketing. He cannot do much harm out in the wilderness, but I would advise you keep your purses close when you are coming back.”

Though they were nearly one and all a little intoxicated, and the hour early enough to yet be dark when they had been marched up to the promontory, the convicts balked at dragon transport, seeing Temeraire’s head swinging towards them through the foggy dimness, and were inclined to withdraw at once.

“It’s more than you can ask a man,” one almost fragile, reedy-voiced fellow said: Jack Telly, sad-eyed and disappointed in his face, his stunted person incongruous with the aggression of his protest. “I can swing a pick all day and all night, and will, too, but I ain’t to be thrown in a dragon’s belly without so much as a by-your-leave.”

The general agreement with this sentiment resisted all logic and
was only overcome with sufficient doses of rum and cajolery to leave the men in a more or less stupefied state—not unlike the methods used for transporting cattle, Laurence with some resignation noted—before they could at last be marched aboard. Green alone refused the bribery, with a shake of his head when offered a glass; he was one of the convicts who had only lately been brought over in the
Allegiance
, and climbed aboard rather with no confidence but a stoic resignation: as though he did not care very greatly if he were to be fed to a dragon.

Forthing saw the loading managed efficiently under Temeraire’s darkling gaze and said, “I believe we are ready, Mr. Laurence,” a little stiffly but without open discourtesy: Granby, Laurence thought, had made him a few pointed remarks, on the subject of his prospects and how likely these were to be advanced through behavior which should irritate the dragon overseeing the remaining eggs that were all his hope of promotion.

“The eggs are quite secure?” Temeraire said, nosing down at his own belly, where they had been snugged in: he had utterly refused to leave them behind, even in Riley’s care.

“No: for Bligh is still aboard the ship,” Temeraire had said, “and apart from any other mischief he might do them, if one should hatch, I should not be at all surprised if Bligh should try and take it for
himself
, since Rankin is not going to oblige him after all. I would not worry ordinarily, but plainly the sea-voyage has affected the eggs badly: that is the only explanation for Caesar, in my opinion,” with great disapproval.

“Pray be sure that the little one is in properly,” Temeraire added now. “It would be quite dreadful if it were to slip out.”

“The netting is tight, and the padding will not shift,” Laurence said, pulling against the thick hawsers of the belly-netting with his hand, and leaning his weight against it, without much yielding. “And we cannot have any fear of the temperature falling too far. Try away, if you will.”

Temeraire reared himself up on his hindquarters and shook; not with quite the usual vigor, as he had too much care for the eggs, but enough to be sure nothing was ready to tumble free or break loose. “All lies well,” he said.

“If you are quite ready,” Iskierka said, “perhaps we might leave in reasonable time, instead of sitting about for hours.”

“Some
of us,” Temeraire returned smartly, “are carrying things, instead of being quite useless; and if you would not mind being careless with the eggs, I would.”

Iskierka could not easily be used for transport: her spikes, which jetted steam almost perpetually, rendered her hazardous to all but trained men and packages securely wrapped in oilcloth; so she was a good deal more unburdened, carrying only Granby and her makeshift skeleton crew.

“I don’t see why we must be in such a hurry,” Caesar said, disconsolately, to take the opposing position; he was not inclined to do much of anything yet but sleep and eat, in the way of new hatchlings, and did not seem much affected by the boredom which had rendered Iskierka an imminent danger. “We might leave tomorrow; or when it is less hot.”

“That,” Temeraire said, “will not be for three months; now stop complaining, and let us be off.”

For all the apprehension of difficulty and tedium, Laurence could not yet repress a sensation of pleasure in climbing aboard Temeraire’s back, the familiar and solid snap of the metal carabiners locking in his hands, securely fixed on to the harness-rings; the sense of a crew, however small, moving about behind him; other beasts in company. And then the great coiling leap upwards: Temeraire’s wings snapping outstretched to cup the rushing hot air, endless blue above welcoming and glitter on the water below.

The
Allegiance
and all Sydney herself were reduced to charming picturesque, the dusty roads become gold ribbons from the air, and beyond the city’s bounds the neat squares of cultivated fields and orchards unrolling before them like a spreading carpet; and the dragons’ shadows fell upon them like cut-out silhouettes, rising over the hills, with the mountains rising in their blue haze in the distance.

T
HE SENSATION GREW
only gradually: the settled fields yielding to unbroken wilderness, stands of ancient timber, eucalypts with their oddly sharp fragrance rising if they landed, and the last hunting tracks fading away beneath the leaf cover. They crossed the Nepean and followed a small nameless tributary winding slow and westward into the mountains, hoping to find somewhere at its end a pass through: but there was none. Instead they came one day after another to another high, rising cliff wall: ragged sandstone, fresh yellow and old stained grey, climbing in heaps of pebbles and cracked boulders to where at last the face rose away sheer.

There was the quality of a hedge-maze to the gorges. The sun appeared only late and vanished early, hidden behind the rearing walls of rock. At first they had been glad of the deep lingering shadows, the cooler air about the river, but with the passing days Laurence was conscious of a building unease as they retreated once more along their course and tried yet another branching of the stream, with only the same fruitless result. They had not yet made forty miles from Sydney, as the dragon flew, and yet they had traversed ten times that distance, it seemed, going back and forth.

It was not merely the lack of civilization; it was the absence of all human life. The country felt wholly untenanted, not empty but abandoned. They had once at night seen a distant fire; in the morning, they had gone on foot nearer to investigate, hoping to meet some native who might perhaps be solicited as a guide; but in the deep crowding thicket they did not find even enough remains of a camp to be sure of what they had seen, or to learn if there were another living soul anywhere within a day’s flight; even Tharkay’s skill could uncover no certain
sign. Upon the stone, from time to time, they found markings: handprints in white ochre, or in red; but these were old and weatherworn, for years perhaps, and spoke only of some distant occupation.