Наоми Новик – Empire of Ivory (страница 16)
‘An excellent notion,’ Wilberforce said, leaving his chair to inspect the scratched diagrams which Temeraire was drawing in the dirt. ‘It will have an Oriental flavour, that is exactly what is needed.’
‘Well, if you think it so; all I can say in its favour, is that it will certainly be the latest nine days’ wonder, whether half a dozen curiosity-seekers come or not,’ Lord Allendale said, and rose brushing the dust from his trousers to say, ‘The preparations will require some time: let us say we hold it in three weeks, and fix the date for the twelfth of the new year.’
‘We can spare you for a night, now and again,’ Jane said, sinking Laurence’s final hope of escape. ‘Our intelligence is limited, now that we have no couriers to risk on spy missions, but the Navy do good business with the French fishermen on the blockade, and they say there has yet been no movement to the coast. They might be lying, of course,’ she added, ‘but if there were a marked shift in numbers, the price of the catches would have risen, with more livestock going to dragons.’
The maid brought in the tea, and Jane poured for him. ‘Do not I beg you repine too much upon it,’ she went on, referring to the Admiralty’s refusal to grant them more funds. ‘Perhaps this party of yours will do us some good in that quarter, and Powys has written me with the news that he has cobbled together something already, through a subscription among the retired senior officers. It will not make for anything extravagant, but I think we can at least keep the poor creatures in pepper, until then.’
Meanwhile, they set about building the experimental pavilion. The promise of such a substantial commission proved enough to tempt a handful of the more intrepid tradesmen to the Dover covert. Laurence met them at the gates with a party of crewmen, and escorted them the rest of the way to Temeraire, who in an attempt to be unalarming, had hunched himself down as small as any dragon of eighteen tons could, and had nearly flattened his ruff completely against his neck. But he could not resist insinuating himself into the conversation once the construction of the pavilion was well under discussion, and indeed his offerings proved quite necessary, as Laurence had not the faintest notion how to translate the Chinese measurements.
‘I want one!’ Iskierka said, having overheard too much of the proceedings from her nearby clearing. Heedless of Granby’s protests, she squirmed through the trees into Temeraire’s quarter, shaking a blizzard of ash, and greatly alarming the poor tradesmen with a hiccup of fire, which sent steam shooting out of her spines. ‘I want to sleep in a pavilion too: I do not like this cold dirt at all.’
‘Well, you cannot have one,’ Temeraire said. ‘This is for our sick friends, and anyway you have no capital to hand.’
‘Then I shall get some,’ she declared. ‘Where does one get capital, and what does it look like?’
Temeraire proudly rubbed his breastplate of platinum and pearl. ‘This is a piece of capital,’ he said, ‘and Laurence gave it to me. He won it taking a ship in a battle.’
‘Oh! that is very easy,’ Iskierka said. ‘Granby, let us go get a ship, and then I may have a pavilion.’
‘Lord, you cannot have anything of the sort, do not be silly,’ Granby said, nodding rueful apologies to Laurence as he entered the clearing along the trail of smashed branches and crushed hedge which his dragon had left in her wake. ‘You would burn it down in an instant: the thing is made of wood.’
‘Can it not be made of stone?’ she demanded, swinging her head around to eye one of the horrified tradesmen. She had not yet grown very large, despite the twelve feet in length she had acquired with a steady diet, since settling at Dover. She was sinuous rather than bulky, in the normal Kazilik style, and looked little more than a garden-snake next to Temeraire. But her appearance at close quarters was by no means as reassuring: the hissing-kettle-noise, of whatever internal mechanism produced her fire, was plainly audible and the vents of hot air issued from her spines, white and impressive in the cold air.
No one answered her, except the elderly architect, Mr. Royle. ‘Stone? No, I must advise against it. Brick would be a much more practical construction,’ he opined. He had not looked up from the plans since being handed them. Badly nearsighted, he inspected them with a jeweller’s loupe, held an inch from his watery blue eyes, and could most likely not make either dragon out. ‘Silly oriental stuff, this roof, do you insist on having it so?’
‘It is not silly oriental stuff at all,’ Temeraire said, indignantly, ‘it is very elegant: that design is my mother’s own pavilion, and it is in the best fashion.’
‘You will need linkboys on it all winter long to brush the snow clear, and I will not give a brass farthing for the gutters after two seasons,’ Royle said. ‘A good slate roof, that is the thing, do you not agree with me, Mr. Cutter?’
Mr. Cutter had no opinion to offer, as he had backed against the trees and looked ready to bolt; and would have if Laurence had not prudently stationed his ground-crew around the border of the clearing to forestall just such panic.
‘I am very willing to be advised by you, sir, as to the best plan of construction, and the most reasonable,’ Laurence said, while Royle blinked around looking for the source of the response. ‘Temeraire, our climate here is a good deal wetter, so we must cut our cloth to suit our station.’
‘Very well, I suppose,’ Temeraire said, casting a wistful eye at the upturned roof and the brightly painted wood.
Iskierka meanwhile, had been inspired and began to plot her acquisition of capital. ‘If I burn up a ship, is that good enough, or must I bring it back whole?’ she demanded.
Her piratical career began the next morning, when she presented Granby with a small fishing-boat, which she had picked out of the Dover harbour during the night. ‘Well, you did not say it must be a
‘Laurence, do you suppose that we could obtain more capital by taking French ships?’ Temeraire asked, with a level of thoughtfulness very alarming to Laurence, who had just returned from dealing with Iskierka’s pretty piece of confusion.
‘The French ships are penned in their harbours by the Channel blockade, thank Heaven, and we are not privateers, to go plying the lanes for their shipping,’ Laurence said. ‘Your life is too valuable to risk in such a selfish endeavour. In any case, once you have began to behave in such an undisciplined manner, you may be sure Arkady and his lot would follow your example and leave Britain undefended; not to mention the encouragement that Iskierka would take from it.’
‘Whatever am I to do with her?’ Granby said, wearily taking a glass of wine with Laurence and Jane in the officers’ common room at the covert headquarters that same evening. ‘I suppose being dragged hither and yon in the shell, has caused it; and all the fuss and excitement she has had since. But that cannot excuse it forever. I must manage her somehow, and I am at a standstill. I would not be surprised if one morning I awoke to find the entire harbour set alight, because she took it into her head that we would not have to sit about defending the city if it were all burned up. I cannot even make her sit still long enough to get her under full harness.’
‘Never mind; I will come by tomorrow, and see what I can do,’ Jane said, pushing the bottle over to him again. ‘She is a little young for work, but I think her energy had better be put to use, than cause all this fretting. Have you chosen your lieutenants yet, Granby?’
‘I will have Lithgow, for my first, if you’ve no objection, and Harper for a second, to act as captain of the riflemen also,’ he said. ‘I don’t like to take too many men, when we don’t know what her growth will be like.’
‘You would not like to turn them off later, you mean, when they, like as not, they cannot get another post.’ Jane said gently, ‘I know it will be hard if it comes to that; but we cannot short-change her, not with her so wild. Take Row also, as captain of the bellmen. He is old enough to retire if he must be turned off, and he is a good steady campaigner, who will not blink at her starts.’
Granby nodded a little, his head bowed. The next morning, with great state, Jane came to Iskierka’s clearing. She wore all of her medals, a gold-plated sabre and pistols on her belt and even her great plumed hat, which aviators scarcely used. Granby had assembled his new crew, and they saluted her with a great noise of arms. Iskierka nearly coiled herself into knots with excitement, and the ferals and even Temeraire peered over the trees to watch with interest.
‘Well, Iskierka; your captain tells me that you are ready for service,’ Jane said, putting her hat under her arm, and looking sternly at the little Kazilik, ‘but what are these reports I hear, that you will not mind his orders? We cannot send you into battle if you cannot follow orders.’