“So long as you are hatched, I do not see you have anything to complain of,” Temeraire said, having put his head inside the pavilion. “Who are these people, and what did they mean by taking you, I would like to know?”
“These are the Larrakia,” the dragonet said, “who had me from the Pitjantjatjara, who had me from the Wiradjuri; and pray do not be angry, for they needed me quite badly. You see, we are sending goods so far that all the directions are in different languages for all the different tribes, and of course all of you in Sydney, and there is no one who can speak to all of them; but now I can, as I have heard them all in the shell,” she finished, with some complacency, “and I am learning Chinese, too, as much as I can; and they have given me a great many jewels.”
“Where?” Iskierka instantly demanded, and Tharunka nosed over a large basket, filled near to the brim with glowing, burnished opals, and the women working around her were polishing still more.
“I do not see much use in just a basket of jewels,” Temeraire said later, in private, drinking a bowl of light fragrant tea prescribed for its cooling properties. “If one had them strung, on gold wire perhaps, there might be something to admire; one cannot wear a basket. At least, not without looking silly.”
“Well, I want some,” Iskierka said. “I like the way they shine, the dark ones. Granby, I am sorry we did not bring more gold with us; do you think there are any prizes we might take, hereabouts?”
Granby very emphatically did not.
The chief of the outpost was Jia Zhen, a gentleman of perhaps thirty years of age, young for so isolated a position of responsibility, and full of energy; he had presented to them with earnest satisfaction all the details of the pavilion, established for the comfort of dragon visitors, and beside it across the courtyard stood a large and comfortable house in the Chinese style, offering an excellent prospect upon the harbor.
Laurence disliked extremely feeling inadequate to his social occasions, and all the more so that the Chinese might have expected him, by the grace of his rank, to be more versed than he was; but the courtesies had baffled him in his short stay at the Imperial court, and he had not improved in the intervening time. He did not know how to tactfully inquire after their purpose in being here, nor how far that purpose went: did they think to establish a colony of their own? It did not seem very probable—the Chinese did not have anything like a merchant marine; the little junk in the harbor looked to him a wallowing death-trap, and he was astonished they should have survived the journey: a matter of sheerest luck.
“I suppose you could not have been very comfortable: it must be two thousand miles of ocean and more,” Laurence said to Jia, doubtfully.
“The journey was tiresome, of course,” Jia agreed, “two weeks nearly without land! But one must endure,” which became comprehensible to them that afternoon, watching as the great-winged dragon came in landing before the pavilion, and yawned hugely before dipping her head to the courtyard’s fountain to drink.
“They cannot colonize very well by dragon, at least,” Laurence said, after a dismayed silence: two weeks to China! He did not suppose one could make it in under two months by sea, even if the monsoon were cooperating.
“No,” Granby said judiciously, peering down at the beast, “she’s prodigious, but it is all in the wings now I see her closer; I don’t think she could carry more than a ton and go anywhere.”
“Which I am afraid begs the question,” Tharkay said, “where several tons a week of smuggled goods are coming from into Sydney, unless they have an army of these beasts,” but this theory Temeraire was able to discount, though scarcely with less disquieting news: the dragon, Lung Shen Li, was one of barely four beasts extant, of a wholly new breed.
“The crown prince gave orders they should be bred,” Temeraire explained, “to travel long distances: she says it took them almost three years to manage, and she is still the only one who can conveniently fly so far: her year-mates cannot stay in the air longer than two or three days at a time.”
“In three years?” Granby said, watching covetously: the dragon was stretching herself out in the sun, the massive wings glowing amber with a fine branching tracework of darker veins and tendons. “It can’t have been done; it is twenty, at the least, to work out a halfway sort of new breed, if you don’t mind it being half-blind when you are done.”
“Oh; it is not that they did not know how,” Temeraire said. “She says that her kind were bred by the Ming, before, and there is a record of the matings.”
“Then why the devil shouldn’t they have done it before?” Granby said.
“Because,” Laurence said slowly, realizing, “they did not wish to; or more to the point, the conservative faction would not allow it. —This is the consequence of Prince Yongxing’s death.”
They were silent, considering the implications for Britain’s empire—China choosing to reach beyond, and with the means to do so. “Do you suppose we will have to quarrel with them, over the place?” Granby said dubiously. “I don’t know how much of the country we have claimed; or where we are, for that matter.”
Laurence laid out the maps on the floor of their chamber, but they were uncertain enough of their position to make the determination more than a little troublesome. “I think we are somewhere near One Hundred Thirty East,” he said finally, “which would put us outside the border: Cook’s claim begins at One Thirty-five. The Dutch might have something, of course; although I cannot recall.”
“Well, the politics of it all are past me,” Granby said, “but someone in Whitehall will want to know this; and I dare say they would like to know it quicker than eleven months from now, too.”
There was more they would like to know, also: Tharkay slipped out, that evening, and returning could report that the dockyards were not so simple as they appeared: there were pulley wheels upon the jetty, and along the shore paving-stones had been laid down in clean lines marking out a road, very broad, in the Chinese style, to accommodate dragons. “With two foundations marked along it,” he said, “I imagine for warehouses; or barracks if you care to be pessimistic.”
Laurence could not but be grateful for their presence, whatever the larger political questions: there was a physician of some skill among them for the benefit of Lung Shen Li, out of caution for any possible complication which might threaten the health of a new breed, and he had with great courtesy discussed Temeraire’s condition with Dorset, and suggested a course of treatment which their supply had further made possible; and besides this, Jia had with great generosity flung wide their stores, and Gong Su had applied himself with great energy: Temeraire had eaten better in one week than in the past two months, and already seemed to Laurence much improved.
There was food enough to meet even Kulingile’s appetite, which they saw properly satisfied for the first time at last when he had eaten a heap of fresh-caught fish nearly the full size of his body; and in a smaller and more personal vein, there was something near paradise in finding after so long and grinding a journey, so civilized and gracious a welcome, familiar even if foreign.
But this same gratitude could not but make Laurence all the more sensible of the very real danger of conflict which this outpost represented. It was not merely the presence of the Chinese, or their cooperation with the native Larrakia: two days after their arrival, several Macassan praus appeared in the harbor, come to harvest trepang. Shortly their small flotilla of canoes were plying the coast, Malay divers plunging from their sides over and over, and in the evening bringing in their haul to be counted up and prepared: enormous vats of boiling sea-water stood on bonfires, and after boiling the trepang were hauled out and laid upon frames in huge dark ranks for drying in the intense heat of the sun.