Наоми Новик – Victory of Eagles (страница 2)

To finish, he carved the characters of his name into the cliff-face by the entrance, although the letter R gave him some difficulty and came out looking rather like the reversed numeral four. When he was done with that, routine crept up and devoured his days. He would rise, when the sun came in at the cave mouth, take a little exercise, nap, rise again when the herdsmen rang the bell, eat, then nap and exercise again, and then go back sleep; there was nothing more. He hunted for himself, once, and so did not go to the daily feeding; later that day one of the small dragons brought up the grounds-master, Mr. Lloyd, and a surgeon, to be sure that he was not ill. They lectured him on poaching sternly enough to make him uneasy for Laurence's sake.

For all that, Lloyd did not think of him as a traitor, either. He did not think enough of Temeraire to consider him capable. The grounds-master cared only that his charges stay inside the borders, ate, and mated; he recognized neither dignity nor stoicism, and anything Temeraire did out of the ordinary was only a bit of fussing. ‘Come now, we have a fresh lady Anglewing visiting today,’ Lloyd would say, ‘quite a nice little piece; we will have a fine evening, eh? Perhaps we would like a bite of veal, first? Yes, we would, I am sure,’ providing the responses with his questions, so Temeraire had nothing to do but sit and listen. Lloyd was a little hard of hearing, so if Temeraire did try to say, ‘No, I would rather have some venison, and you might roast it first,’ he was sure to be ignored.

It was almost enough to put one off making eggs. Temeraire was growing uncomfortably sure that his mother would not have approved of how often they wished him to try, or how indiscriminately. Lien would certainly have sniffed in the most insulting way. It was not the fault of the female dragons sent to visit him, they were all very pleasant, but most of them had never managed to produce an egg before, and some had never even been in a real battle or done anything interesting at all. They were frequently embarrassed, as they did not have any suitable present that might have made up for their position; but it was not as though he could pretend that he was not a very remarkable dragon, even if he liked to; which he did not, very much. He would have tried to pretend for Bellusa, a poor young Malachite Reaper without a single action to her name, sent by the Admiralty from Edinburgh. She had miserably offered him a small knotted rug, which was all her confused captain would afford: it might have made a blanket for Temeraire's largest talon.

‘It is very handsome,’ Temeraire said awkwardly, ‘and so cleverly done; I admire the colours very much,’ He tried to drape it carefully over a small rock, by the entrance, but the gesture only made her look more wretched, and she burst out, ‘Oh, I do beg your pardon; he wouldn't understand in the least, and thought that I meant I would not like to, and then he said—’ and she stopped abruptly in even worse confusion, so Temeraire was sure that whatever her captain had said, it had not been at all nice. He had not even had the satisfaction of delivering one of his cherished retorts, because it was not as though she herself had said anything rude. So, although he had not much wanted to, he obliged anyway. He was determined to be patient, and quiet; he would not cause any trouble. He would be perfectly good.

Temeraire did not let himself think very much about Laurence; he did not trust himself. It was hard to endure the perpetual sensation of deep unease, almost overpowering when he thought of how he did not know how Laurence was, what his condition might be.

He was sure he knew where his breastplate was at every moment, and his small gold chain, these being in his own possession; his talon-sheaths had been left with Emily, and he was quite certain she could be trusted to keep them safe. Ordinarily he would have trusted Laurence, to keep himself safe; but the circumstances were not what they ought to be, and it had been so very long. The Admiralty had promised that so long as he behaved, Laurence would not be hanged, but they were not to be trusted, not at all. Temeraire resolved twice a week to go to Dover, at once, or to London – only to make inquiries, to see they had not, only to be sure. But unwanted reason always asserted itself, before he had even set out. He must not do anything that might persuade the Government he was unmanageable, and therefore that Laurence was of no use to them. He must be as complaisant and accommodating as ever he might.

It was a resolution already sorely tried by the end of his third week, when Lloyd brought him a visitor, admonishing the gentleman loudly, ‘Remember now, not to upset the dear creature, but to speak nice and slow and gentle, like to a horse,’ which was infuriating enough, even before the gentleman in question was named to him as one Reverend Daniel Salcombe.

‘Oh, you,’ Temeraire said, which made Salcombe look taken aback, ‘Yes, I know perfectly well who you are. I have read your very stupid letter to the Royal Society, and I suppose now you have come to see me behave like a parrot, or a dog.’

Salcombe stammered excuses, but it was plainly the case. He began laboriously to read to Temeraire a prepared list of questions, something quite nonsensical about predestination, but Temeraire would have none of it. ‘Pray be quiet; St. Augustine explained it much better than you, and it did not make any sense even then. Anyway, I am not going to perform for you, like some circus animal. I really cannot be bothered to speak to anyone so uneducated that he has not even read the Analects,’ he added, guiltily omitting Laurence; but then Laurence did not set himself up as a scholar, and write insulting letters about people he did not know, ‘And as for dragons not understanding mathematics, I am sure I know more on the subject than do you.’

He scratched out a triangle into the dust, and labelled the two shorter sides. ‘There; tell me the length of the third side, and then you may talk. Otherwise, go away, and stop pretending you know anything about dragons.’

The simple diagram had already perplexed several gentlemen, when he had put it to them during a party in the London covert, rather disillusioning Temeraire as to the general understanding of mathematics among the human populace. Reverend Salcombe evidently had not paid much attention to that part of his education either, for he stared, and coloured to his mostly bare pate. Then he turned to Lloyd furiously, ‘You have put the creature up to this, I suppose! You prepared the remarks—’ The unlikelihood of this accusation striking him, perhaps, as soon as he met Lloyd's gaping, uncomprehending face. He immediately amended, ‘they must have been given to you, by someone, and you fed them to him, to embarrass me—’

‘I never, sir,’ Lloyd protested, to no avail, and it annoyed Temeraire so much that he nearly indulged himself in a very small roar; but in the last moment he exercised great restraint, and only growled. Salcombe fled hastily all the same, Lloyd running after him, calling anxiously for the loss of his tip. He had been paid, then, to let Salcombe come and gawk at Temeraire, as though he really were a circus animal. Temeraire was only sorry he had not roared, or better yet thrown them both in the lake.

And then his temper faded, and he drooped. He realized too late, that perhaps he ought to have talked to Salcombe, after all. Lloyd would not read to him, or even tell him anything of the world. If Temeraire asked slowly and clearly enough to be understood, he only said, 'Now, let's not be worrying ourselves about such things, no sense in getting worked up. Salcombe, however ignorant, had at least wished to have a conversation; and he might have been prevailed upon to read something from the latest Proceedings, or a newspaper. Oh, what Temeraire would have done for a newspaper!

During this time the heavyweight dragons had been finishing their own dinners. The largest, a big Regal Copper, spat out a well-chewed grey and bloodstained ball of fleece, belched tremendously, and lifted away for his cave. Now the rest came in a rush, middle-weights and light-weights and the smaller courier-weight beasts landing to take their own share of the sheep and cattle, calling to one another noisily. Temeraire did not move, but only hunched himself a little deeper while they squabbled and played around him He did not look up even when one, with narrow blue-green legs, set herself directly before him to eat, crunching loudly upon sheep bones.

‘I have been considering the matter,’ she informed him, after a little while, around a mouthful, ‘and in all cases, where the angle is ninety degrees, as I suppose you meant to draw it, the length of the long side must be a number which, multiplied by itself, is equal to the lengths of the two shorter sides, each multiplied by themselves, added.’ She swallowed noisily, and licked her chops clean. ‘Quite an interesting little observation. How did you come to make it?’