Crucible of Gold (Temeraire #7)

Gong Su had begun laying up stores as best he could lacking salt; Temeraire had knocked him down a large hollow tree, for smoking, and he had somehow managed to acquire a local technique of drying meat through observation and pantomime. Some he also endeavored to exchange for sacks of dried maize. “I make no promises that it will eat well,” he said to Laurence, having organized several of the sailors to lug the sacks back to their ragged little tent-camp on the city outskirts, “but at least we will not starve.”

But though their pile of llama hides rose, the best leather they were able to produce was only a half-rotten scaly-natured material, which stank queerly and gave no-one much confidence in its holding up to even the most sedate flight. “But sir,” Forthing said privately, “I don’t answer for the men if we don’t leave soon: they will be at the temple, the first chance they get. I have had to chase a dozen of ’em down this week, and Battersea made it all the way: was busy chipping away at the wall with his pocket-knife, when I came on him.”

Nor was this their only concern regarding the men: at the beginning of their third week of labor, Forthing came to report two gone missing entirely, and four days later Handes disappeared as well. “If it were him alone, sir, I would suppose he had run off,” Forthing said, “but Griggs was not meant for hanging; and Yardley is too damned lazy even to go after the gold unless someone were marching him to it. What if they should have them here, those bunyips—” these creatures, native to the desert of the Australian continent, having been responsible for similar disappearances when first encountered.

“This is settled country,” Laurence said, “and I cannot imagine Hualpa leaving us unwarned of such a peril, if it existed; nor such incaution as the local populace show, about walking in the open. No: I must assume they have been stolen, in the charming local style,” he finished dryly.

“And how the devil are we to find them, I would like to know,” Granby added.

Temeraire was indignant and determined to pursue inquiries; but without much success, until several days later Ferris came into camp with Griggs, an awkward expression, and half-a-dozen men carrying baskets, which when he had gestured to have them set down proved to be full of excellent leather, thick and well-cured. “Sir,” he said to Laurence, “I hardly know if you will think I have done well—I don’t know myself—”

“Where has all this come from, Mr. Ferris?” Laurence said, putting down the lid of the basket.

“It is for Handes,” Ferris said, “and for Yardley; payment, I mean. Or something like it, anyway: the land on the other side of that woods belongs to a dragon, and it seems he has a fellow there who can speak Spanish and a little English—ran with a missionary, a few years ago—and he crept over at night and persuaded them to go.”

“Persuaded them?” Laurence said, in some incredulity, rising: Ferris flushed.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “I have seen them—well, Griggs, here; Yardley I saw putting his head around a corner peering at me, and Handes wouldn’t show himself anywhere as long as I was there. Griggs has thought better of it, but the others wouldn’t come away.”

Griggs looked uneasy and ashamed, and muttered when Laurence looked at him: “Which we were promised no work, sir,” he said, “and a lot of gold, and women; but then I was thinking about my old mum and how she would manage, so—”

“Well, Mr. Griggs,” Laurence said grimly, “I will not count you a deserter as you have thought better of it before we have left port, as it were; but you will not stir out of camp another instant while we are here. Mr. Ferris, pray explain yourself.”

“Sir, I meant to round them up,” Ferris said, “and I had words with that fellow, the missionary’s guide, about what he meant by it, and how our dragons would take it; so then he said as they did not want to go back, it seemed hard on them to be dragged; what if we should take some gifts, in exchange, and let them stay: and he offered me the leather. And—” He paused, and then with a small helpless shrug said, “Sir, it seemed to me, what was the sense in bringing them back, when instead—”

“—we might sell them for our gain?” Laurence said. Ferris bit his lip and was silent.

“Laurence,” Granby said, with another basket open and running the leather through his hands, “I don’t mean to quarrel with you over managing the sailors, in the least; but I will say I would damned well rather have six baskets of this leather than Handes, any road; and I would call us lucky to find anyone to take him at the price. We might leave him, and fetch Yardley back?”

“I cannot disagree as far as Handes is concerned,” Temeraire put in, nosing at the basket appreciatively, “and were we not going to hang him, when next we might have a court-martial? But Laurence, I do of course take your point: we cannot be letting strange dragons lure away our men, and think they may do so unchecked; very soon they should be coming after my crew. Perhaps I had better go and speak to this dragon: and if he would like to fight, I am sure I would be willing to oblige him.”

Laurence ran a hand through his hair—already disordered in the day’s work, and now certain to be more so—and stared at Griggs, with his lowered head. For a man to walk headlong and willfully into slavery, even under the most sybaritic inducement, was beyond comprehension; it was the same spirit, Laurence supposed helplessly, which induced men to yield themselves and their nation to the dominion of a Napoleon.

Handes, at least, could not be accused of yielding merely to folly and blind greed: he had his life to gain, and Laurence did not so love hanging men that he felt a particular eagerness to pursue the end at any cost. And yet Handes had more than earned the penalty—

“I am not suggesting we ought to let a condemned man run free,” Granby said. “But he hasn’t been tried yet, you know; and we are not properly his officers. A court-martial might let him off with a flogging, at that; it is the sort of thing the Navy will do once in a while, when there are aviators in the case: begging your pardon, of course.”

“The Navy does not take so generous a view of mutineers under any circumstances,” Laurence said. “And even so: there is a difference in allowing the man to remain behind and live to be of use to someone else—in some fashion—and accepting payment for him, as though we were prepared to sell our own.”

“You might think of it as a dowry,” Granby suggested, with a suspicious twitching around his mouth.

“Yes; thank you, John,” Laurence said dryly.

He went with Temeraire to the neighboring estate—a large and prosperous farm, with more of the great stone storehouses visible in the distance at the end of the fields, and the residences a wide courtyard bordered around by more of the thatch-roofed huts. The dragon, a middling creature of some ten or eleven tons, was at that moment engaged in delivering a load of timber to the waiting hands of a dozen men evidently preparing to erect another of these houses. She put it down and hopped over to put herself between them and Temeraire, as he winged in for a landing.

“He says you are only going to kill him,” Magaya said in great indignation, when they had confronted her, “and not even for some particularly special reason, such as a very important sacrifice; and no-one even does that anymore. It is a wicked waste, and I am sure the governor knows nothing of it; he could not allow it, if he did. I will not give him back to you: so!” And she flung back her head defiantly; although the effect was rather spoiled by her jumping back hastily when Temeraire frilled his ruff out wide and made a low, rumbling roar in his throat.

“I am sure I have never seen anything like the behavior of dragons in this country,” Temeraire said, “it is beyond everything; first there is Palta, calling me a bunyip of some sort, and Hualpa saying we are thieves; and now you, stealing our people—”

“I did not!” she said. “They came to me! That is not the same at all—”

“Stealing,” Temeraire repeated, “and then brazening at me, as though you were up to my weight; I suppose because you think you can have a champion fight me in your stead—which might be tolerable if you were in the right, but you certainly are not; and in any case I could beat any champion who liked to try.”

“My dear,” Laurence said aside, laying a restraining hand upon Temeraire’s neck, when Temeraire had finished translating this exchange, “I must remind you it is not stealing: these men are the subjects of the King, but even so do not belong to him, as property, and saving the obligations of their duty and the law have the right to dispose of themselves as they please.”

“Well—yes, of course,” Temeraire said, although Laurence could not help but notice that Temeraire seemed very willing to enter into the local notion of possession where it came to his crew, “but you see, Laurence, to her it is certainly stealing; that is, she meant to steal them and did not know they were not mine; so it does not make her less a thief, because they might not really be so.”

“I am in the right,” Magaya said meanwhile, in her defense, “because you have not taken proper care of them. If I were to start hanging my men from trees, and beating them, and keeping them at hard labor all the time, of course they would complain of me to the governor, and find someone who would look after them better: so of course the law allows for it.”

“I have, too—” Temeraire began.

“You have not,” Magaya said. “Why, they are all in rags, nearly, and not one of them has anything nice that anyone can see.”

Temeraire flattened his ruff, and looked uncomfortable, and had to be pressed to translate this. “But that is only because we have had a very difficult journey,” he said defensively, “and because I have Laurence’s best things put safely by. Anyway,” he added, “how should you know anything of the sort, if you were not watching and luring people away.”

Magaya puffed up her neck and shoulder feathers and sank her head back into them in an attitude of embarrassment, giving something of the appearance of a huddled chick.

“So,” Temeraire continued, triumphantly, “it is nonsense to say my men ran away to you: perhaps Handes did, but that is because he does not want to be punished for behaving very badly indeed; but Griggs and Yardley only came because you made them sneaking promises behind my back. It is not to be borne, and I am sure the law does not make provision for that.”

“I do not admit doing anything of the sort,” Magaya said, with dignity, “but even if I had, they would not have listened, if they were not dissatisfied. Anyway,” she went on hurriedly, “as you are so upset, I see now that you do value them: but perhaps I might give you some more presents, instead?”

“There can be no question of leaving them behind, especially Yardley,” Temeraire said. “They are the King’s subjects, and members of our crew—”

“Oh, very well: but you might leave Handes, at least,” she said. “You do not want him, after all; you only mean to put him to death. I could give you clothing, so your other men would not have to be so ragged—”

“Well,” Temeraire said, and, Laurence was sorry to see, very enthusiastically entered into what he could tell even without benefit of translation was nothing less than haggling over price.

He eventually sat back on his haunches, satisfied, and Magaya smoothed down her collar of feathers in equal pleasure; she called over her shoulder to the watching workmen, and several of them trooped away to the storehouses: returning momentarily with many more baskets, of clothing and the leather sandals worn locally, of dried maize, and even one smallish one full of salt.

Yardley was brought out of one of the huts, and slunk over with a sullen and guilty air. “Sure I am coming down sick, sir, with that plague as killed all those people,” he said, “so I thought I might as well stay here to die, and for them to give you goods for all the fellows—”

“That is enough, Mr. Yardley,” Laurence said, putting a halt to this flow of excuses. “You are very fortunate indeed that Mr. Ferris found you; do you imagine that you would be permitted to live a life of indolence once we had gone, and the beast no longer needed to keep you seduced to hold you by her? I see no idle hands on this farm.”

“Sure I don’t mind work,” Yardley said, outrageously, then added, “and she is the sweetest thing you ever saw, sir; as friendly as could be,” which amazed Laurence for a moment, looking at Magaya with her eleven tons and viciously serrated teeth, until he saw in the doorway of the hut a young woman standing and waving cheerful farewell, all unclothed save a blanket wrapped around her and under one bare shoulder.

He shook his head. “Temeraire,” he said, “will you find out from Magaya if that young woman has been made promises—if she expects marriage—”

“What do you mean?” Magaya said suspiciously. “You cannot have her!—or do you mean you will leave Yardley with us, after all?”

“No, no,” Temeraire said, “I mean—Laurence, what do I mean?” he asked doubtfully.

“If there is a child,” Laurence said, “there must be consideration for its care.”

“Of course we will take care of it,” Magaya said, when this was put to her. “The mother is in our ayllu, so the baby will be, too.”

“Yes, but,” Laurence began, “have her chances of marriage been materially harmed, by her—her congress, with—”

“Why would they be?” Magaya said.

“I am sure I do not know,” Temeraire said, and looked at Laurence inquiringly.

“As she is no longer virgin,” Laurence said in despair, forcing himself to bring it out. “And even if that dragon does not care either way, perhaps men will; pray inquire of the young lady, herself.”