Tongues of Serpents (14 page)

“Thank Heaven,” Laurence said, low; and looked a question at Tharkay, why he had not roused all the camp for the discovery.

“I did not find our singers,” Tharkay said, “but their tracks, I believe: there is a way over the ridge to another river, and its banks are not impassable. I have found only the fewest signs of passage, but the trail is not unused. I think it may answer your search—and perhaps mine, also.”

“The—smugglers?” Laurence said, slowly, relying on Temeraire’s intuition.

Tharkay paused and said, “I imagine you find I have been very close; although perhaps not so close as I might have prided myself upon.”

“You may congratulate yourself as much as you like,” Laurence said ruefully, “—my intelligence is borrowed: Temeraire worked out the whole, not myself, and that only by guessing. But I cannot see I have the least right to demand candor from you on the subject of your private affairs. I am sufficiently in your debt,” he added, “that I hope you know I would be glad of an opportunity to make some return; and you need not make me explanations.”

Tharkay smiled, glinting a little even in the dark. “You are kind to make me such an offer; I can well imagine how little you would like in practice to lend yourself so blindly to another man’s course.”

Very true, Laurence was forced to admit, “but despite that, I will not withdraw,” he said, “and if you prefer to keep your silence, I beg you to believe I will not press you.”

“I do not propose to entertain myself unnecessarily,” Tharkay said, “though I will ask you to come aside with me: I have been silent all this while shipboard only because I am not content with the genteel fiction of privacy when separated by only a plank of wood from a hundred idle ears, and I am no more so here in an open forest, surrounded by men who may only pretend to sleep.”

“Y
ES,”
Tharkay said, “I am looking for the smugglers.”

They had walked a short distance into the trees, pressing down the undergrowth; pebbles shifting underfoot and the creak of branches pushed aside assured them no one should be following without their hearing it.

“The East India Company,” Tharkay continued, “is losing some fifty thousand pounds per annum to their work, and they fear worse to come; much worse. So far the illegal trade is only a trickle, but it is a steady trickle they cannot close up, and widening.”

Laurence nodded. “And the goods are not coming in by sea?”

“More to the point,” Tharkay said, “the goods are not leaving by Canton.” Laurence stared. “You begin to understand the degree of their concern, I think.”

“How can they be certain?” Laurence said. “The port is fantastically busy; some shipments must be able to evade their monopoly.”

Tharkay said, “When the smuggling first began to be noticed, a little more than a year ago, word was sent to the offices in Canton to make a note of all ships coming through the port, with the intention of tracing the source: similar efforts have been made before, of course, although they were puzzled by a method so indirect as funneling the goods through Sydney—”

“The operation must eat nearly all the profit of it,” Laurence said.

“So they imagined,” Tharkay said, “and did not at first take it very seriously; they expected to find at the bottom of it only some enthusiast, who was willing to spend a pound to save sixpence: there is very little which inspires creativity so much as government tariffs and licenses. But the ships and their cargo are accounted for, nearly every
one. There are a handful of cases—” He shrugged a little, dismissing these. “Nothing which could account for the steady flow of goods; which is only increasing.”

“They fear, then, that the Chinese have opened another port,” Laurence said, “to some other nation.”

“Perhaps not officially,” Tharkay said. “But if the officials of some port city should choose to turn a blind eye to the occasional foreign vessel; for instance, if they should be persuaded by one with sympathy for some foreign nation—”

“Lien,” Laurence said immediately, “and Napoleon would care nothing for the profit; not so long as he could undermine our trade.”

Tharkay nodded. “It all fits together very nicely,” he said. “The French funnel cheap goods to our markets, undercutting the East India Company—”

Trade was Britain’s lifeblood: it bore the cost of the merchant marine which trained her seamen and her shipbuilders; it brought in the gold and silver which funded her allies, and put armies on the Continent to stand in the way of Bonaparte’s dominion. “If prices fell badly enough, they might cause a panic in the Exchange,” Laurence said. “But would anyone in China risk so obliging Lien?”

She had been disgraced in China with the death of her former companion, Prince Yongxing: he had been chief of that conservative faction which had preferred to have nothing to do with the nations of the West, either in commerce or in politics. They had schemed to supplant Crown Prince Mianning, himself privately a sympathizer with the more liberal slant of his court; their design having been uncovered and thwarted, and Yongxing himself slain, Lien had chosen exile in France, divorcing herself from her former home in hopes of finding Napoleon an effective instrument of revenge.

Tharkay shrugged. “You know as well as do I the reverence with which Celestials are viewed, and Yongxing’s political allies were only defeated, not eradicated. In the intervening years, they may have regrouped.”

“It seems just the sort of thing Lien would do,” Temeraire said, shaking his tendrils free of water, having drunk his fill, and enjoying the sentiment of righteous disdain. “She and Yongxing were so angry that China should have any trade with the West, and tried to do so many
wicked things all in the name of preventing it; and now she has changed her notion and is looking for more.”

Laurence paused, and doubtfully said, “I had not considered that her philosophy was so opposed to opening the borders of China, in its principles; it is incongruous, a little,” then fell silent.

“That is just what I mean,” Temeraire said. “She is perfectly happy to throw all of that over, if only it will hurt us: just her sort of unpleasantness. Laurence, I do not mean to complain,” he added, “for this water is very nice—so fresh and crisp!—but I
am
hungry.”

Tharkay’s little creek had led them, with only half-an-hour’s flight, to the river into which it merged: wide and clear, and lined along both banks with tall, tall pines. The river flowed in the wrong direction for their needs, south towards Sydney instead of away, and anyway it was full of rocks and very shallow in places; but there was room to walk along its banks, and Tharkay was of the opinion that if they should follow it upstream, they might well find it beginning somewhere in a pass, on the other side of the mountains.

Temeraire thought it an excellent idea to stay close to the river, in any case; one grew so very parched, much more quickly than one might have expected, and then of course there was Caesar—

He cast a disgusted look over: Caesar had needed to be carried to the river, even after they had given him two canteens full of water, and told him there was more to be had, even more cool and refreshing; it had not stirred him to make any effort. He had only said, “I don’t care to fly, just yet; Temeraire may take me,” in the most casual way, and sighed even when asked to climb up onto Temeraire’s back. And when they had finally brought him to the river, he had climbed down and, before anyone could stop him, walked straight on off the bank to immerse himself, so everyone else who wished to drink or to fill a canteen had to use a less convenient place further upstream.

Even the poor sick convict Jonas Green had done better: he had roused up quite heroically when given a full cup, and said, “Damn me if I will die, after all: let me have some more!” and although he trembled dreadfully when he tried to stand, he hobbled over with two men helping him, and sat by the bank until he had managed to wash himself all over, and his wretchedly stinking clothing also, all of which he spread beside him on some flat stones, in the sunlight, to dry.

Caesar, on the other hand, had to be reminded to drink; and then not allowed to drink too much; and then prodded sharply to get out of
the water, so others might bathe; even though he was so small yet that a little while lying in the river had sufficed to see him clean. He had sighed and hinted that he wanted scrubbing, when all he needed to do was flatten himself a little to have the water rush over his back with no help. Rankin had at once ordered several of the convicts to oblige him, which meant they were all tired and disinclined to help when Temeraire wished to be bathed a little, too, and needed someone to carry buckets up to his back to pour the water over.

Temeraire sighed and made the best of what Demane and Roland could do, meanwhile dabbling his nose in the deepest part of the river, and tipping his head up so the water would run down his neck. “You might wash down the eggs, too,” he added, “with a soft rag, if you please, and not very hard, only to be sure the shells are clean.”

Lieutenant Forthing was very quick to join in this work, Temeraire noted disapprovingly, and made sure to keep close watch upon him and ensure Forthing did not try and speak to the eggs, to make them any inappropriate promises or brag of himself. “That is enough; it is clean, so you may have done,” Temeraire said, when Forthing had wiped away the dust on the larger egg, the Yellow Reaper; he was not so eager to linger while working on the very little one, at least.

“Temeraire,” Tharkay said to him, when they had all drunk their fill, and settled for a comfortable rest in the shade, while the sun worked past its height, “do you see any signs of fire, along the river, more distantly?”

Temeraire did not mind leaping aloft for a little while, now there was water, and hovering looked as closely as he could in either direction, so far as he could see before the river twisted out of sight around a curve, and plunged away into a canyon the other way, but there was no sign of any person at all, “and also,” he said, coming back down, “I am sorry to say, no sign of any game. I hope I have not been too ungrateful, about the kangaroos.”

“That may make us a little uncomfortable, but it is some encouragement to me if the game has been frightened off,” Tharkay said, and turned towards the camp.

“So you propose to erect a road alongside the river,” Rankin was saying to Laurence, “which will meander in every direction, to the certain unnecessary expense of twenty miles out of fifty, no doubt, and having been built in the midst of summer and drought will be flooded
at the first rains; and this, before we have even traced it to its conclusion.”

“Captain Rankin,” Laurence said, in that very level and restrained way which meant he was particularly angry, “if you have uncovered a more certain passage, overnight, I would be glad to hear of it. In the meantime, we are charged to build a road—”

“We are not charged to waste our days wandering in an uncomfortable wilderness to no good purpose, sitting idly by and shepherding these men along, to we know not what end,” Rankin said. “And I
have
made use of a night’s reflection to better comprehend what anyone of sense,” he stressed, pointedly, “might have observed, from our flights yesterday: there is no reason why these gorges should make a passage at all, and as they evidently choose to collapse at very little provocation, even if we should find one, we could not rely on its perpetuity. We are wandering in a maze that has no exit. We had far better go up on the heights, and find a crossing along the ridges.”

“So that every cow can be marched a thousand feet into the air, and a thousand feet down again, before they come to market,” Granby said. “Precious clever sort of route that would make.”

The day was just as stifling and unpleasant, and they were all hungry, and inclined to argue; as they did not mean to walk any further at present, there was nothing else to do, and it was too hot even to sleep.

“Seems to me we might stay by the water and be comfortable,” Jack Telly said, never shy of putting in his own opinion.

“Much to no one’s surprise,” Rankin snapped. “I imagine we would see two hours’ work in a day, and the rest spent in idling and drunken stupors.”

Temeraire, for his part, privately thought that at least the ridges, being so much higher, would be cooler and more pleasant; one might have a chance of some wind, and at least one would not be staring into these rock walls on every side: so confining. But of course, he would not say anything which might support Rankin, who did not deserve such a mark of distinction; as he had made the suggestion, it could be of no use whatsoever.

“May I propose,” Tharkay said, “that when the sun has eased, we instead follow the course of the river to its culmination and see what advantage this route affords; we need not immediately begin construction.”

This seemed quite sensible; but Rankin did not answer Tharkay,
and indeed he turned his back, without a word, and walked away to sit with Caesar: not even the slightest inclination of his head, to acknowledge he had been spoken to, and Tharkay had not been the least bit impolite. “I do not understand what business Rankin has, behaving so rudely,” Temeraire said to Laurence afterwards, while they began to collect the baggage once again.