Black Powder War. Naomi Novik
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stopping-place of exiles forced to leave the country; a miasma of bitterness lingered.
‘We can reach Yumen before the worst heat of the day,’ Tharkay said, and Temeraire drank deeply from the fortress cistern. They left by the only exit, a single enormous tunnel passing from the inner courtyard and through the whole length of the front battlements, dim sputtering lanterns at infrequent intervals flickering over walls almost covered with ink and in places etched by dragon claws, the last sad messages before departure, prayers for mercy and to one day come home again. Not all were old; fresh broad cuts at the tunnel’s edge crossed over other, faded letters, and Temeraire stopped and read them quietly to Laurence:
Ten thousand li between me and your grave,
Ten thousand li more I have yet to travel.
I shake out my wings and step into the merciless sun.
Past the shade of the deep tunnel, the sun was indeed merciless and the ground dry and cracked, drifted over with sand and small pebbles. As they loaded up again outside, the two Chinese cooks, who had grown quiet and unhappy overnight despite not the least signs of homesickness over the whole course of their journey thus far, walked a little way off and each picked up a pebble and flung it at the wall, in what seemed to Laurence an odd hostility: Jing Chao’s pebble bounced off, but the other, thrown by Gong Su, skittered and rolled down the sloping wall to the ground. At this he made a short gasp and came at once to Laurence with a torrent of apology, of which even Laurence with his very scant supply of Chinese could make out the meaning: he did not mean to come any further.
‘He says that the pebble did not come back, and that means he will never return to China,’ Temeraire translated; meanwhile Jing Chao was already handing up his chest of spices and cooking tools to be bundled in with the rest of the gear, evidently as reassured as Gong Su was distressed.
‘Come now, this is unreasonable superstition,’ Laurence said to Gong Su. ‘You assured me particularly you did not mind leaving China; and I have given you six months’ wages in advance. You cannot expect me to pay you still more for your journey now, when you have been at work less than a month’s time, and are already reneging upon our contract.’
Gong Su made still further apologies: he had left all the money at home with his mother, whom he made out to be thoroughly destitute and friendless otherwise, though Laurence had met the stout and rather formidable lady in question along with her eleven other sons when they had all come to see Gong Su off from Macau. ‘Well,’ Laurence said finally, ‘I will give you a little more to start you on the way, but still you had much better come with us. It will take you a wretchedly long time to get home going by land, apart from the expense, and I am sure you would soon feel very foolish at having indulged your fancy in such a manner.’ Truthfully, of the two Laurence would much rather have spared Jing Chao, who was proving generally quarrelsome and given to berating the ground crew in Chinese if they did not treat his supplies with what he considered appropriate care. Laurence knew some of the men were beginning to inquire quietly of Temeraire about the meaning of some words to understand what was being said to them; Laurence suspected himself that many of Jing Chao’s remarks were impolite, and if so the situation would certainly become difficult.
Gong Su wavered, uncertainly; Laurence added, ‘Perhaps it only means you will like England so very well you will choose to settle there, but in any case I am sure nothing good can come of taking fright at such an omen, and trying to avoid whatever your fate may be.’ This made an impression, and after a little more consideration Gong Su did climb aboard; Laurence shook his head at the silliness of it all, and turned to say to Temeraire, ‘It is a great deal of nonsense.’
‘Oh; yes,’ said Temeraire with a guilty start, pretending he had not been eyeing a convenient boulder, roughly half the size of a man, which if flung against the wall would likely have brought the guards boiling out in alarm and convinced they were under bombardment by siege weaponry. ‘We will come back someday, Laurence, will we not?’ he asked, a little wistfully: he was leaving behind not only the handful of other Celestial dragons who were all his kin in the world, and the luxury of the Imperial court, but the ordinary and unconscious liberties which the Chinese system showed to all dragons as a matter of course, in treating them very little different from men at all.
Laurence had no such powerful reasons for wanting to return: to him China had been the scene only of deep anxiety and danger, a morass of foreign politics, and if he were honest even a degree of jealousy; he did not himself feel any desire ever to come back. ‘When the war is over, whenever you would like,’ he said however, quietly, and put a hand on Temeraire’s leg, comforting, while the crew finished getting him rigged out for the flight.
They left the green oasis of Dunhuang at dawn, the camel bells in a querulous jangle as the beasts reluctantly trudged away over the dune-crests, their shaggy flat feet muddling the sharp lines of the ridges which cut the sunlight into parts: the dunes like ocean waves captured in pen and ink, on one side perfectly white and on the other pure shadow, printed on the pale caramel colour of the sand. The caravan trails unknotted themselves one at a time and broke away to north and south, joinings marked by heaps of bones with staring camel-skulls piled atop. Tharkay turned the lead camel’s head southwards, the long train following: the camels knew their work even if their still-awkward riders did not. Temeraire padded after like a disproportionate herd-dog, at a distance far enough to comfort them, near enough to keep any of them from trying to bolt the way they had come.
Laurence had expected the terrible sun, but so far north, the desert did not hold its heat: by mid-day a man was soaked through with sweat; an hour after nightfall he was chilled to the bone, and a white frost crept over the water-casks during the night. The eagle kept itself fed on brown-spotted lizards and small mice, seen otherwise only as shadows darting uneasily beneath rocks; Temeraire daily reduced the camel train by one; the rest of them ate thin tough strips of dried meat, chewed for hours, and coarse tea mixed into a vile but nourishing slurry with oat flour and roasted wheat berries. The casks were reserved for Temeraire; their own supply came from the water-bags each man carried for himself, filled every other day or so from small decaying wells, mostly tainted with salt, or shallow pools overgrown with tamarisk trees, their roots rotting in the mud: the water yellow and bitter and thick, scarcely drinkable even when boiled.
Each morning Laurence and Temeraire took Tharkay aloft and scouted some little distance ahead of the camel-train for the best path, though always a shimmering haze distorted the horizon, limiting their view; the Tianshan range to the south seemed to float above the blurred mirage, as though the blue jutting mountains were divided from the earth, upon another plane entirely.
‘How lonely it is,’ Temeraire said, though he liked the flying: the heat of the sun seemed to make him especially buoyant, perhaps acting in some peculiar way upon the air-sacs which enabled dragons to fly, and he needed little effort to keep aloft.
He and Laurence would often pause during the day together: Laurence would read to him, or Temeraire recite him attempts at poetry, which he had acquired a taste for in Peking, it being there considered a more appropriate occupation for Celestials than warfare; when the sun dipped lower they would take to the air to catch up the rest of the convoy, following the plaintive sound of the camel bells through the dusk.
‘Sir,’ Granby said, jogging to meet Laurence as they descended, ‘one of those fellows is missing, the cook.’
They went aloft again at once, searching, but there was no sign of the poor devil; the wind was a busy house-keeper, sweeping up the camel-tracks almost as quickly as they had been made, and to be lost for ten minutes was as good as for eternity. Temeraire flew low, listening for the jingle of camel-bells, fruitlessly; night was coming on quickly, and the lengthening shadows of the dunes blurred together into a uniform darkness. ‘I cannot see anything more, Laurence,’ Temeraire said sadly: the stars were coming out, and there was only a thin sliver of moon.
‘We will look again tomorrow,’ Laurence said to comfort him, but with little real hope; they set down again by the tents, and Laurence shook his head silently as he