Tongues of Serpents Read Free

has
me,”
Temeraire had said, “and as for kidnapping, I would like to know whose notion it was to take the eggs halfway across the world on the ocean, with storms and sea-serpents everywhere, and to this odd place that is not even a proper country, with no dragons; it was certainly not mine.”
    “Mr. Laurence is going directly to hard labor, like all the rest of the prisoners,” Lieutenant Forthing had said, quite stupidly, as though Temeraire were allowing any such thing to happen.
    “That is quite enough, Mr. Forthing,” Granby had said, overhearing,and coming upon them. “I wonder that you would make any such ill-advised remark; I pray you take no notice of it at all, Temeraire, none at all.”
    “Oh! I do not in the least,” Temeraire answered, “or any of these other complaints; it is all nonsense, when what you mean is,” he added to Forthing and his associates, “you would like to keep the eggs by you, so that they should not know any better when they hatch, but think they must go at once into harness, and that they must take whichever of you wins them by chance: I heard you talk of drawing lots last night in the gunroom, so you needn’t try and deny it. I will certainly have none of it, and I expect neither will the eggs, of any of you.”
    He had of course carried his point, and the eggs, away to their present relative safety and comfort, but Temeraire had no illusions as to the trustworthiness of people who could make such spitefully false remarks; he did not doubt that they would creep up and snatch the eggs away if he gave them even the least chance. He slept curled about the tent, therefore, and Laurence had put Roland and Demane and Sipho on watch, also.
    The responsibility was proving sadly confining, however, particularly as Iskierka was not to be trusted with the eggs for any length of time. Fortunately the town was very small, and the promontory visible from nearly any point within it if one only stretched out one’s neck to look, so Temeraire felt he might risk it, only long enough to find Laurence and bring him back. Of course Temeraire was sure no one would be absurd enough to try and treat Laurence with any disrespect, but it could not be denied that men were inclined to do unaccountable things from time to time, and Forthing’s remark stirred uneasily in the back of his head.
    It was true, if one wished to be very particular about such things, that Laurence was a convicted felon: convicted of treason, and his sentence commuted to transportation only at the behest of Lord Wellington, after the last campaign in England. But that sentence had been fulfilled, in Temeraire’s opinion: no-one could deny that Laurence had now been transported, and the experience had been quite as much punishment as anyone could have wished.
    The unhappy
Allegiance
had been packed to the portholes with still-more-unhappy convicts, who had been kept chained wrist-and-ankle all the day, and stank quite dreadfully whenever they were brought out for exercise in their clanking lines, some of them hanginglimp in the restraints. It seemed quite like slavery, to Temeraire; he did not see why it should make so vast a difference as Laurence said, only because a law-court had said the poor convicts had stolen something: after all, anyone might take a sheep or a cow, if it were neglected by its owner and not kept under watch.
    Certainly it made the ship as bad as any slaving vessel: the smell rose up through the planking of the deck, and the wind brought it forward to the dragondeck almost without surcease; even the aroma of boiling salt pork, from the galley below, could not erase it. And Temeraire had learned by accident, perhaps a month out on their journey, that Laurence was quartered directly by the gaol, where it must have been far worse.
    Laurence had dismissed the notion of making any complaint, however. “I do very well, my dear,” he had said, “as I have the whole liberty of the dragondeck for my days and the