Tongues of Serpents (19 page)

“Laurence,” Temeraire said urgently, nudging him; Laurence was drowsing lightly against his forearm, sitting near the egg. “Laurence, perhaps you might wake up.”

“Yes?” Laurence said, still asleep, and rubbed his hand over his face.

“I am not afraid myself, of course; but I should not like to alarm the men,” Temeraire added, “and I am afraid we may have got into the underworld, somehow: I cannot account for it otherwise.”

“—I beg your pardon?” Laurence said, opening his eyes, and standing; and then he was silent.

“I am sorry we should have pressed on during the night,” Temeraire said, “but perhaps it was Jack Telly’s spirit—”

“We are not in the underworld!” Laurence said, but the men when they woke were more of Temeraire’s mind; until the meager breakfast of biscuit had been shared out, and then one very stupid person said, “I reckon there wouldn’t be biscuit, in the hot place; we’m in China, I expect, and whoever would want to come here, I don’t know.”

At once the convicts all agreed: they had certainly reached China. They were not moved from this ridiculous opinion, either, even when Temeraire exasperated said, “But this is not China at all; China is across the ocean from here, and it is a very splendid place, not like this at all; there are thousands and thousands of dragons there, all over.”

“There you have it,” O’Dea said to the others with ghoulish relish, “a godforsaken place: we will see a horde of them fly out of the west, any morning now, coming to devour us; and then we will go down to Old Nick’s country in the end.” Temeraire put back his ruff in irritation.

“Some mineral in the soil gives it the color, I imagine,” Dorset said,
scraping at the earth with the end of a stick and peering inquisitively at the still-brighter dirt revealed below.

“We must backtrack in any case,” Tharkay said, shading his eyes with a hand. “We must have overshot the turning of their trail.”

“I can’t see they would come into this countryside,” Granby agreed, absently rubbing his arms as he looked around him yet again, as though he could not help it; Temeraire could see many of the other men doing so as well, and it made him look again also: it was indeed very odd to find oneself in the middle of this queer red landscape. “It
is
a godforsaken country; I don’t suppose anyone can live here comfortably. Shall we go back to that water-hole we saw, last night? And we had better see the men all have a drink, before they come over ugly on us.”

But when they had flown on three miles—still the endless sweeping in either direction, and all the while their eyes on the ground, so the tiny distance took the better part of two hours—Tharkay suddenly leaned forward on Iskierka’s back, and Temeraire followed her to the ground: Tharkay leaped down in three bounds from her back to the sands, and he stooped at a mounded heap of red sand, exactly hollowed to that same eggshell curve, and beside it, stark and brilliantly reflecting in the sunlight, a white ochre handprint was marked freshly upon a jutting monolith of dark red stone.

Iskierka left them an hour later, winging her way back to Sydney, though not without a great deal of quarreling and dissension: she had not wished to leave, nor Granby; but there was no help for it. A smugglers’ trail, which should by necessity come to a definite conclusion in some fixed harbor, was one thing; but the natives might go anywhere at all in their own country, and in circles if they wished.

“All right, maybe it isn’t the smugglers; but what would the natives want with a dragon?” Granby had said. “I don’t say they have any reason to love us, but they can’t ever have
seen
a dragon before we landed in this country, and if you should tell me that a first glimpse of Temeraire, or Iskierka, or even Caesar, should make a man want to hatch a beast out for himself, I call it mad.”

They were all at something of a loss from the new discovery: but besides the handprint the heavy red sand had taken all around the imprint
of bare feet, and Tharkay had uncovered, too, some remnants of their meal: emptied seed-pods, roasted, and the stems of berries from a bush near-by; native, and certainly no smugglers would have made such a meal at the risk of poisoning themselves.

Tharkay shrugged a little. “I do not pretend to an understanding of their motives,” he said, “but their tracks are reasonably clear, and I am afraid it answers a great many questions: I have already found it strange the smugglers should continue this far without making a turn for the coast, and such easy familiarity with their route was wholly unlikely even if the French had been colonizing this continent for a century.”

“They have stolen the egg because it was precious to us,” Rankin said impatiently. “We had it swaddled up as a great treasure; what more do you need? Likely they have not even realized it will hatch out a dragon, and think it some species of jewel.”

Laurence could not be so easily dismissive. He would once have given as little credence to a native power sufficient to rival those of Europe, or as sophisticate in its organization and its forces. Although this was not a country, he rather thought, looking around the barren landscape, which should easily sustain and conceal an empire so large as the lush heart of Africa had concealed that of the Tswana; still he was not inclined to again make so dangerous an assumption.

“They have at the very least evaded us, despite the most urgent and enthusiastic search, over many days,” Laurence added, “which ought command our respect and wariness. It would be a very unimaginative man who would look at a dragon egg and think it anything other than it is: they do have birds here, and snakes. Far more likely they should see us in company with Temeraire and Iskierka and Caesar, and realize the prize before them. They cannot be pleased with the usurpation of their territory by the farmers of the colony, and anything which offers them the power of resistance or of leveling the ground must appeal.”

Rankin shrugged. “Very well; in that case we must fear at any moment that several thousand wild tribesmen, full of loathing, will leap on us in the night: splendid.”

The greater danger of course was the far more certain one: that the trail might go on a long, cold time of searching; and it was this which necessitated Iskierka’s departure. “We must grant them every power of hiding themselves from us in it, and knowing their way,” Laurence said to Granby, “—and Riley cannot wait, weeks and weeks gone, and no
word of us at all. We were already overlong, looking for our route through the mountains. By now he must be looking to see us return to Sydney every day.”

“Well, I am not haring off to leave you here in the middle of the desert, if that is what you are getting at,” Granby said.

“It is fairer to say that
we
are presently haring off, away from any reasonable course,” Laurence said. “If the natives are not our friends, they are at least not the French; and one middle-weight dragon will not give them the power of doing us much harm even if they should wish to, when Temeraire is in the colony.”

Fairer or not, Granby refused to like it, and Iskierka liked it still less. “Well, I am not going anywhere until we have found the egg,” she said, dismissively, “so there is no sense discussing it: Riley must wait, and that is all.”

But Riley would not wait, of course; they had already been gone nearly three weeks, on a trip that ought to have taken them one, and with no word sent back. Whatever misfortune could befall a party of two heavy-weight dragons and thirty men would not be lightly dismissed, and there was hardly anyone of the colony who could be sent in search of them, either. They would be written down as lost, victims of an unfamiliar territory; Riley might even leave the sooner, to bring the disastrous news back to England.

Even Temeraire was no ally, for once proving reluctant to see Iskierka go. “It is not that I am pleased with her company,” he said to Laurence, “or that I cannot rescue the egg myself, of course; only it would be churlish to send her away, as though she were not worth having along. And she has been very handy at hunting; one cannot deny it.”

“With as little game as this country looks likely to hold, from this day’s flight,” Laurence said, “if we must penetrate into it for any distance, that must argue rather for her departure, than her remaining: the two of you cannot as easily be fed as one in covering the same ground. But my dear, the greater concern must be their necessary imprisonment upon this continent: if Riley leaves, they are trapped with us for years perhaps, unjustly.”

“Well, as far as that goes,” Temeraire said, “I must say I do not see why it is just that I should be left behind, when Iskierka is not; for you cannot argue she is any more obedient to the Government than I am. But I do see the point: eggs are not always being stolen, and I am sure
she would be tiresome again as soon as we had it back; and I dare say wanting to eat all the cows. For that matter, we ought to send Caesar back, also, I suppose?”

He finished hopefully, but this, of course, was by no means desirable: keeping Caesar and Rankin from interference in the colony’s affairs was no longer their most pressing concern, but that scarcely meant they now wished to encourage it; and Caesar was not leaving with the
Allegiance
, in any case.

“We might go,” Granby said reluctantly, “and come back, if you would build some cairns to show us which way you have gone. It isn’t as though you would be moving very quickly, chasing a bunch of fellows traveling on foot: thirty miles in a day must be their utmost limit. We could catch you up if Riley thinks he can give us the time: I suppose he wouldn’t mind that new mast, or at least it is an excuse. At this rate we will be chasing these fellows clear across the country, anyway, and we might well meet him on the other side, if he goes sailing around.”

They did not immediately settle on this course: Iskierka continued to resist, and then there was the question of the convicts, and what was to be done with them. The men themselves were all for being taken back to Sydney, or at the least returned to the comfortable valley; Granby did not wish to leave Laurence so deserted.

“I know one can’t call them reliable,” he said, “but they are hands, and if you do find these fellows who have the egg, and need to work it away from them, you may need more than just your own and Temeraire’s. It’s precious easy to keep a dragon pinned down if you have an egg it is brooding: a little child could make Temeraire come to heel like a well-trained hound, with nothing more than a rock. And,” he added in an undertone, “Rankin mayn’t be good company, and he is a bounder, but in justice one can’t call him a coward.”

Rankin did not immediately offer his own opinion; Laurence was a little surprised to find him consulting quietly with Caesar, away to one side—he could scarcely have imagined an aviator less likely to inquire after a dragon’s wishes. But Caesar’s interests were the only ones aligned with Rankin’s, of their company, which perhaps had driven him to such straits; and having conceded so far, no one could deny Caesar a great deal of sharpness, if he was too ungenerous for wisdom.

“Certainly I am not leaving,” Rankin said, at length returning, when Granby pressed him. “If you are going, Captain Granby, I must necessarily assume command of the search; the recovery of the egg is
our highest duty, and there can be no question of our returning to Sydney at present,” by which he likely meant no value in finding himself again awkwardly committed to Bligh. “As for the men, for my part, you had better take this lot and deposit them back on the sufferance of the colony; they will hardly be of much use to us.”

“Well, sir,” O’Dea said to Laurence, “I do not mean to be quarrelsome, but we were offered our liberty for cutting a road: and I don’t suppose we will get the one without the other.”

“Those who wish to remain, and carry out their service, may,” Laurence said. “Any man who prefers to return to the security of the colony, likewise; I prefer no unwilling hands.”

Temeraire sighed a little, watching Iskierka go, after a great deal of urgent persuasion from Granby and only with the promise of returning, within the narrowest span of time. “And she is flying flat-out,” he said, “and on quite a straight course; none of this tiresome sweeping. I do not suppose Tharkay might be able to make out their trail a little better, now that he knows they are natives and not smugglers, so we might not have to go hunting quite so wide?”

“First,” Laurence said, “we must have water.”

Water they might not have, however; not easily. The trees were quite misleading, and a patch of greenery did not seem to mean an oasis, as one might have expected. “They may be like succulents,” Laurence offered as an explanation, “and have some reservoir of water to sustain them through the summer droughts, I suppose.” But if Temeraire tore one up—rather difficult for all they were very skinny, as they had enormous nests of roots—it was quite dry all the way through, and there was not even a little cache of water which a person might drink from.

So they had to keep on with their sweeps, looking now always for some little trickle or gleam of water, and even more importantly for another sign of the thieves: who might easily go in any direction whatsoever. It was very distressing to look upon Laurence’s maps of the enormous continent, so spread open, and so unmarked; they were already a way into the blank mysterious space at the center, and far from the surveyed coastlines. Now that Iskierka was gone, Temeraire felt still more anxious to be sure he did not overlook any movement, any small track which Tharkay perhaps could not see so well from aloft.

Caesar was flying alongside now, which limited their pace to his; as
Laurence had pointed out, that was even so a good deal faster than any person might have walked, so Temeraire tried not to be anxious, but he was nevertheless very soon annoyed, for even though it was Caesar who necessitated their going slower, he nevertheless felt justified in making many unnecessary remarks on Temeraire’s own preoccupation, and his efforts to watch the ground.

“I can’t see why you should be jumping down and up like a jack-in-the-box, every time you see some sand being stirred up by the wind,” Caesar said. “You will get worn out, and then you will want more of the food and water when we get it, and precious little of either to start.”