“I know too little about the likely currents and the prevailing winds in the Bay of Zhitao to make any accurate estimate,” Laurence said, taken aback. “A week at least, I should think.”
“I wish to God Staunton were here already. I have a thousand questions and not enough answers,” Hammond said. “But I can at least try and coax a little more information from Sun Kai: I hope he will be a little more forthright now. I will go and seek him; I beg your pardon.”
At this, he turned and ducked back into the house. Laurence called after him belatedly, “Hammond, your clothes—!” for his breeches were unbuckled at the knee, they and his shirt hideously bloodstained besides, and his stockings thoroughly laddered: he looked a proper spectacle. But it was too late: he had gone.
Laurence supposed no one could blame them for their appearance, as they had been brought over without baggage. “Well, at least he is gone to some purpose; and we cannot but be relieved by this news that there is no alliance with France,” he said to Temeraire.
“Yes,” Temeraire said, but unenthusiastically. He had been quite silent all this time, brooding and coiled about the garden. The tip of his tail continued flicking back and forth restlessly at the edge of the nearer pond and spattering thick black spots onto the sun-heated flagstones, which dried almost as quickly as they appeared.
Laurence did not immediately press him for explanation, even now Hammond had gone, but came and sat by his head. He hoped deeply that Temeraire would speak of his own volition, and not require questioning.
“Are all the rest of my crew all right also?” Temeraire asked after a moment.
Laurence said, “Willoughby has been killed, I am very sorry to tell you. A few injuries besides, but nothing else mortal, thankfully.”
Temeraire trembled and made a low keening sound deep in his throat. “I ought to have come. If I had been there, they could never have done it.”
Laurence was silent, thinking of poor Willoughby: a damned ugly waste. “You did very wrong not to send word,” he said finally. “I cannot hold you culpable in Willoughby’s death. He was killed early, before you would ordinarily have come back, and I do not think I would have done anything differently, had I known you were not returning. But certainly you have violated your leave.”
Temeraire made another small unhappy noise and said, low, “I have failed in my duty; have I not? So it was my fault, then, and there is nothing else to be said about it.”
Laurence said, “No, if you had sent word, I would have thought nothing of agreeing to your extended absence: we had every reason to think our position perfectly secure. And in all justice, you have never been formally instructed in the rules of leave in the Corps, as they have never been necessary for a dragon, and it was my responsibility to be sure you understood.
“I am not trying to comfort you,” he added, seeing that Temeraire shook his head. “But I wish you to feel what you have in fact done wrong, and not to distract yourself improperly with false guilt over what you could not have controlled.”
“Laurence, you do not understand,” Temeraire said. “I have always understood the rules quite well; that is not why I did not send word. I did not mean to stay so long, only I did not notice the time passing.”
Laurence did not know what to say. The idea that Temeraire had not noticed the passage of a full night and day, when he had always been used to come back before dark, was difficult to swallow, if not impossible. If such an excuse had been given him by one of his men, Laurence would have outright called it a lie; as it was, his silence betrayed what he thought of it.
Temeraire hunched his shoulders and scratched a little at the ground, his claws scraping the stones with a noise that made Chuan look up and put his ruff back, with a quick rumble of complaint. Temeraire stopped; then all at once he said abruptly, “I was with Mei.”
“With who?” Laurence said, blankly.
“Lung Qin Mei,” Temeraire said, “—she is an Imperial.”
The shock of understanding was near a physical blow. There was a mixture of embarrassment, guilt, and confused pride in Temeraire’s confession which made everything plain.
“I see,” Laurence said with an effort, as controlled as ever he had been in his life. “Well—” He stopped, and mastered himself. “You are young, and—and have never courted before; you cannot have known how it would take you,” he said. “I am glad to know the reason; that is some excuse.” He tried to believe his own words; he did believe them; only he did not particularly want to forgive Temeraire’s absence on such grounds. Despite his quarrel with Hammond over Yongxing’s attempts to supplant him with the boy, Laurence had never really feared losing Temeraire’s affections; it was bitter, indeed, to find himself so unexpectedly with real cause for jealousy after all.
They buried Willoughby in the grey hours of the morning, in a vast cemetery outside the city walls, to which Sun Kai brought them. It was crowded for a burial place, even considering the extent, with many small groups of people paying respects at the tombs. These visitors’ interest was caught by both Temeraire’s presence and the Western party, and shortly something of a procession had formed behind them, despite the guards who pushed off any too-curious onlookers.
But though the crowd shortly numbered several hundreds of people, they maintained an attitude of respect, and fell to perfect silence while Laurence somberly spoke a few words for the dead and led his men in the Lord’s Prayer. The tomb was above-ground, and built of white stone, with an upturned roof very like the local houses; it looked elaborate even in comparison with the neighboring mausoleums. “Laurence, if it wouldn’t be disrespectful, I think his mother would be glad of a sketch,” Granby said quietly.
“Yes, I ought to have thought of it myself,” Laurence said. “Digby, do you think you could knock something together?”
“Please allow me to have an artist prepare one,” Sun Kai interjected. “I am ashamed not to have offered before. And assure his mother that all the proper sacrifices will be made; a young man of good family has already been selected by Prince Mianning to carry out all the rites.” Laurence assented to these arrangements without investigating further; Mrs. Willoughby was, as he recalled, a rather strict Methodist, and he was sure would be happier not to know more than that her son’s tomb was so elegant and would be well-maintained.
Afterwards Laurence returned to the island with Temeraire and a few of the men to collect their possessions, which had been left behind in the hurry and confusion. All the bodies had been cleared away already, but the smoke-blackened patches remained upon the outer walls of the pavilion where they had sheltered, and dried bloodstains upon the stones; Temeraire looked at them a long time, silently, and then turned his head away. Inside the residence, furniture had been wildly overturned, the rice-paper screens torn through, and most of their chests smashed open, clothing flung onto the floor and trampled upon.
Laurence walked through the rooms as Blythe and Martin began collecting whatever they could find in good enough condition to bother with. His own chamber had been thoroughly pillaged, the bed itself flung up on its side against the wall, as if they had thought him maybe cowering underneath, and his many bundles from the shopping expedition thrown rudely about the room. Powder and bits of shattered porcelain trickled out across the floor behind some of them like a trail, strips of torn and frayed silk hanging almost decoratively about the room. Laurence bent down and lifted up the large shapeless package of the red vase, fallen over in a corner of the room, and slowly took off the wrappings; and then he found himself looking upon it through an unaccountable blurring of his vision: the shining surface wholly undamaged, not even chipped, and in the afternoon sun it poured out over his hands a living richness of deep and scarlet light.