Thrusting himself up with an effort from the ground, Laurence managed to knock Mianning down even as the whole gilt-and-painted structure smashed into the courtyard stones, bursting into foot-long shards of wood. He bent low over the prince to shield them both, covering the back of his neck with his good arm. Splinters jabbed him painfully even through the padded broadcloth of his heavy coat, one sticking him badly in the thigh where he had only his trousers, and another, razor-sharp, sliced his scalp above the temple as it flew.
Then the deadly hail was past, and Laurence straightened wiping blood from the side of his face to see Yongxing, with a deeply astonished expression, fall over: a great jagged splinter protruding from his eye.
Temeraire and Lien managed to disentangle themselves and sprang apart into facing crouches, still growling, their tails waving angrily. Temeraire glanced back over his shoulder towards Yongxing first, meaning to make another try, and halted in surprise: one foreleg poised in the air. Lien snarled and leapt at him, but he dodged instead of meeting her attack, and then she saw.
For a moment she was perfectly still, only the tendrils of her ruff lifting a little in the breeze, and the thin runnels of red-black blood trickling down her legs. She walked very slowly over to Yongxing’s body and bent her head low, nudging him just a little, as if to confirm for herself what she must already have known.
There was no movement, not even a last nerveless twitching of the body, as Laurence had sometimes seen in the suddenly killed. Yongxing lay stretched out his full height; the surprise had faded with the final slackening of the muscles, and his face was now composed and unsmiling, his hands lying one outflung and slightly open, the other fallen across his breast, and his jeweled robes still glittering in the sputtering torchlight. No one else came near; the handful of servants and guards who had not abandoned the clearing huddled back at the edges, staring, and the other dragons all kept silent.
Lien did not scream out, as Laurence had dreaded, or even make any sound at all; she did not turn again on Temeraire, either, but very carefully with her talons brushed away the smaller splinters that had fallen onto Yongxing’s robes, the broken pieces of wood, a few shredded leaves of bamboo; then she gathered the body up in both her foreclaws, and carrying it flew silently away into the dark.
Chapter 17
LAURENCE TWITCHED AWAY from the restless, pinching hands, first in one direction then the other: but there was no escape, either from them or from the dragging weight of the yellow robes, stiff with gold and green thread, and pulled down by the gemstone eyes of the dragons embroidered all over them. His shoulder ached abominably under the burden, even a week after the injury, and they would keep trying to move his arm to adjust the sleeves.
“Are you not ready yet?” Hammond said anxiously, putting his head into the room. He admonished the tailors in rapid-fire Chinese; and Laurence closed his mouth on an exclamation as one managed to poke him with a too-hasty needle.
“Surely we are not late; are we not expected at two o’clock?” Laurence asked, making the mistake of turning around to see a clock, and being shouted at from three directions for his pains.
“One is expected to be many hours early for any meeting with the Emperor, and in this case we must be more punctilious than less,” Hammond said, sweeping his own blue robes out of the way as he pulled over a stool. “You are quite sure you remember the phrases, and their order?”
Laurence submitted to being drilled once more; it was at least good for distraction from his uncomfortable position. At last he was let go, one of the tailors following them halfway down the hall, making a last adjustment to the shoulders while Hammond tried to hurry him.
Young Prince Miankai’s innocent testimony had quite damned Yongxing: the boy had been promised his own Celestial, and had been asked how he would like to be Emperor himself, though with no great details on how this was to be accomplished. Yongxing’s whole party of supporters, men who like him believed all contact with the West ought to be severed, had been cast quite into disgrace, leaving Prince Mianning once more ascendant in the court: and as a result, further opposition to Hammond’s proposal of adoption had collapsed. The Emperor had sent his edict approving the arrangements, and as this was to the Chinese the equivalent of commanding them done instantly, their progress now became as rapid as it had been creeping heretofore. Scarcely had the terms been settled than servants were swarming through their quarters in Mianning’s palace, sweeping away all their possessions into boxes and bundles.
The Emperor had taken up residence now at his Summer Palace in the Yuanmingyuan Garden: half a day’s journey from Peking by dragon, and thence they had been conveyed almost pell-mell. The vast granite courtyards of the Forbidden City had turned anvils under the punishing summer sun, which was muted in the Yuanmingyuan by the lush greenery and the expanses of carefully tended lakes; Laurence had found it little wonder the Emperor preferred this more comfortable estate.
Only Staunton had been granted permission to accompany Laurence and Hammond into the actual ceremony of adoption, but Riley and Granby led the other men as an escort: their numbers fleshed out substantially by guards and mandarins loaned by Prince Mianning to give Laurence what they considered a respectable number. As a party they left the elaborate complex where they had been housed, and began the journey to the audience hall where the Emperor would meet them. After an hour’s walk, crossing some six streams and ponds, their guides pausing at regular intervals to point out to them particularly elegant features of the landscaped grounds, Laurence began to fear they had indeed not left in good time: but at last they came to the hall, and were led to the walled court to await the Emperor’s pleasure.
The wait itself was interminable: slowly soaking the robes through with sweat as they sat in the hot, breathless courtyard. Cups of ices were brought to them, also many dishes of hot food, which Laurence had to force himself to sample; bowls of milk and tea; and presents: a large pearl on a golden chain, quite perfect, and some scrolls of Chinese literature, and for Temeraire a set of gold-and-silver talon-sheaths, such as his mother occasionally wore. Temeraire was alone among them unfazed by the heat; delighted, he put the talon-sheaths on at once and entertained himself by flashing them in the sunlight, while the rest of the party lay in an increasing stupor.
At last the mandarins came out again and with deep bows led Laurence within, followed by Hammond and Staunton, and Temeraire behind them. The audience chamber itself was open to the air, hung with graceful light draperies, the fragrance of peaches rising from a heaped bowl of golden fruit. There were no chairs but the dragon-couch at the back of the room, where a great male Celestial presently sprawled, and the simple but beautifully polished rosewood chair which held the Emperor.
He was a stocky, broad-jawed man, unlike the thin-faced and rather sallow Mianning, and with a small mustache squared off at the corners of his mouth, not yet touched with grey though he was nearing fifty. His clothes were very magnificent, in the brilliant yellow hue which they had seen nowhere else but on the private guard outside the palace, and he wore them entirely unconsciously; Laurence thought not even the King had looked so casually in state robes, on those few occasions when he had attended at court.
The Emperor was frowning, but thoughtful rather than displeased, and nodded expectantly as they came in; Mianning stood among many other dignitaries to either side of the throne, and inclined his head very slightly. Laurence took a deep breath and lowered himself carefully to both knees, listening to the mandarin hissing off the count to time each full genuflection. The floor was of polished wood covered with gorgeously woven rugs, and the act itself was not uncomfortable; he could just glimpse Hammond and Staunton following along behind him as he bowed each time to the floor.