Throne of Jade - Naomi Novik

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as well; they had been with him now for several months. But the timing was wretchedly inconvenient: the sailors would likely be nervous to begin with at the presence of a dragon, and if Temeraire involved himself in any dispute, taking the part of his crew, that could only increase the tensions on board.

      ‘Pray take no offence,’ Laurence added, stroking Temeraire’s flank to draw his attention. ‘The beginning of a journey is so very important; we wish to be good shipmates, and not encourage any sort of rivalry among the men.’

      ‘Hm, I suppose,’ Temeraire said, subsiding. ‘But we have done nothing wrong; it is disagreeable of them to complain so.’

      ‘We will be underway soon,’ Laurence said, by way of distraction. ‘The tide has turned, and I think that is the last of the embassy’s luggage coming aboard now.’

      Allegiance could carry as many as ten mid-weight dragons, in a pinch; Temeraire alone scarcely weighed her down, and there was a truly astonishing amount of storage space aboard. Yet the sheer quantity of the baggage the embassy carried began to look as though it would strain even her great capacity: shocking to Laurence, used to travelling with little more than a single sea-chest, and seeming quite out of proportion to the size of the entourage, which was itself enormous.

      There were some fifteen soldiers, and no less than three physicians: one for the prince himself, one for the other two envoys, and one for the remainder of the embassy, each with assistants. After these and the translator, there were besides a pair of cooks with assistants, perhaps a dozen body servants, and an equal number of other men who seemed to have no clear function at all, including one gentleman who had been introduced as a poet, although Laurence could not believe this had been an accurate translation: more likely the man was a clerk of some sort.

      The prince’s wardrobe alone required some twenty chests, each one elaborately carved and with golden locks and hinges: the bo’sun’s whip flew loud and cracking more than once, as the more enterprising sailors tried to pry them off. The innumerable bags of food had also to be slung aboard, and having already come once from China, they were beginning to show wear. One enormous eighty-pound sack of rice split wide open as it was handed across the deck, to the universal joy and delectation of the hovering seagulls, and afterwards the sailors were forced to wave the frenzied clouds of birds away every few minutes as they tried to keep on with their work.

      There had already been a great fuss about boarding, earlier. Yongxing’s attendants had demanded, at first, a walkway leading down to the ship – wholly impossible, even if the Allegiance could have been brought close enough to the dock to make a walkway of any sort practical, because of the height of her decks. Poor Hammond had spent the better part of an hour trying to persuade them that there was no dishonour or danger either in being lifted up to the deck, and pointing at frustrated intervals at the ship herself, a mute argument.

      Hammond had eventually said to him, quite desperately, ‘Captain, is this a dangerously high sea?’ An absurd question, with a swell less than five feet, though in the brisk wind the waiting barge had occasionally bucked against the ropes holding her to the dock, but even Laurence’s surprised negative had not satisfied the attendants. It had seemed they might never get aboard, but at last Yongxing himself had grown tired of waiting and ended the argument by emerging from his heavily-draped sedan chair, and climbing down into the boat, ignoring both the flurry of his anxious attendants and the hastily offered hands of the barge’s crew.

      The Chinese passengers who had waited for the second barge were still coming aboard now, on the starboard side, to the stiff and polished welcome of a dozen Marines and the most respectable-looking of the sailors, interleaved in a row along the inner edge of the gangway, decorative in their bright red coats and the white trousers and short blue jackets of the sailors.

      Sun Kai, the younger envoy, leapt easily down from the bo’sun’s chair and stood a moment looking around the busy deck thoughtfully. Laurence wondered if perhaps he did not approve the clamour and disarray of the deck, but no, it seemed he was only trying to get his feet underneath him: he took a few tentative steps back and forth, then stretched his sea-legs a little further and walked the length of the gangway and back more surely, with his hands clasped behind his back, and gazed with frowning concentration up at the rigging, trying evidently to trace the maze of ropes from their source to their conclusion.

      This was much to the satisfaction of the men on display, who could at last stare their own fill in return. Prince Yongxing had disappointed them all by vanishing almost at once to the private quarters which had been arranged for him at the stern; Sun Kai, tall and properly impassive with his long black queue and shaved forehead, in splendid blue robes picked out with red and orange embroidery, was very nearly as good, and he showed no inclination to seek out his own quarters.

      A moment later they had a still better piece of entertainment; shouts and cries rose from below, and Sun Kai sprang to the side to look over. Laurence sat up, and saw Hammond running to the edge, pale with horror: there had been a noisy splashing. But a few moments later, the older envoy finally appeared over the side, dripping water from the sodden lower half of his robes. Despite his misadventure, the grey-bearded man climbed down with a roar of good-humoured laughter at his own expense, waving off what looked like Hammond’s urgent apologies; he slapped his ample belly with a rueful expression, and then went away in company with Sun Kai.

      ‘He had a narrow escape,’ Laurence observed, sinking back into his chair. ‘Those robes would have dragged him down in a moment, if he had properly fallen in.’

      ‘I am sorry they did not all fall in,’ Temeraire muttered, quietly for a twenty-ton dragon; which was to say, not very. There were sniggers on the deck, and Hammond glanced over at them anxiously.

      The rest of the retinue were gotten aboard without further incident, and stowed away almost as quickly as their baggage. Hammond looked much relieved when the operation was at last completed, blotting his sweating forehead on the back of his hand, though the wind was knife-cold and bitter, and sat down quite limply on a locker along the gangway, much to the annoyance of the crew. They could not get the barge back aboard with him in the way, and yet he was a passenger and an envoy himself, too important to be bluntly told to move.

      Taking pity on them all, Laurence looked for his runners: Roland, Morgan, and Dyer had been told to stay quiet on the dragondeck and out of the way, and so were sitting in a row at the very edge, dangling their heels into space. ‘Morgan,’ Laurence said, and the dark-haired boy scrambled up and towards him, ‘go and invite Mr. Hammond to come and sit with me, if he would like.’

      Hammond brightened at the invitation and came up to the dragondeck at once; he did not even notice as behind him the men immediately began rigging the tackles to hoist aboard the barge. ‘Thank you, sir, thank you, it is very good of you,’ he said, taking a seat on a locker which Morgan and Roland together pushed over for him, and accepting with still more gratitude the offer of a glass of brandy. ‘How I should have managed, if Liu Bao had drowned, I have not the least notion.’

      ‘Is that the gentleman’s name?’ Laurence said; all he remembered of the older envoy from the Admiralty meeting was his rather whistling snore. ‘It would have been an inauspicious start to the journey, but Yongxing could scarcely have blamed you for his taking a misstep.’

      ‘No, there you are quite wrong,’ Hammond said. ‘He is a prince; he can blame anyone he likes.’

      Laurence was disposed to take this as a joke, but Hammond seemed rather glumly serious about it; and after drinking the best part of his glass of brandy in what already seemed to Laurence, despite their brief acquaintance, an uncharacteristic silence, Hammond added abruptly, ‘And pray forgive me – I must mention, how very prejudicial such remarks may be – the consequences of a moment’s thoughtless offence—’

      It took Laurence a moment to puzzle out that Hammond referred to Temeraire’s earlier resentful mutterings; Temeraire was quicker and answered for himself. ‘I do not care if they do not like me,’ he said. ‘Maybe then they will let me alone, and I will not have to stay in China.’ This thought visibly struck him, and his head came up with sudden enthusiasm. ‘If I were very offensive, do you suppose they

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