Crucible of Gold

“That,” Temeraire said, “is only because she has been put in the way of them, by luck; you may be sure if ever a prize offered, I should certainly be equal to taking it, and I dare say,” he added in fairness, “when you have been in a few actions, you should be sure of doing so as well; as long as you do not let yourself be shot.”

“I don’t think I should care for being shot,” Kulingile said, and shook his head as a wave came rousing over the bow and went sheeting over them, cold straight through. “I don’t care for this, either,” he added.

“No,” Temeraire agreed, hunching water off his shoulders, and huddled back down as the ship went bounding into a trench, a glassy wall of ocean rising sharply ahead.

The Allegiance was by no means the vessel one would choose for riding out a typhoon. “A wallowing bow-heavy tub with more sail than sea-sense; I would as soon cut my throat as try and make her mind,” Laurence remembered hearing Riley himself say of her several years before, when the two of them had watched from the rail of the dear old Reliant as the transport attempted awkwardly to maneuver her way into Portsmouth: neither of them dreaming, at the time, they should ever be upon her in their present circumstances. Laurence had then six years of seniority on the post-list,and with an influential and political family and a record of distinction was marching steadily towards his admiral’s flag, destined only for the most plum assignments; Riley his protégé and second lieutenant, with reason to hope for his own ship in the course of another five years with Laurence’s own influence behind him.

That influence eradicated, Riley had been glad enough to take the Allegiance when she had been offered him. Now, of course, no more such criticism was to be heard from him or even tolerated in his presence, but it was not to be denied that her only virtue was in being almost too large to sink, which in the present circumstances felt more a gauntlet thrown to the elements, a challenge they looked all too determined to meet. Laurence recalled with no fondness their last experience of a serious blow: three days endlessly laboring their way up the crowded swells, doubting every moment whether the ship should reach the crest in time.

And though Riley had knocked some seamanship into all but the worst of the landsmen and gaol-birds, during the passage to New South Wales, there were a great many of the worst: dragon transports were not prized assignments, and Riley had not sufficient influence to preserve his best men from being pillaged away by senior captains. Laurence could not observe the workings of the resultant crew with anything like satisfaction; and yet he could do nothing to amend it but keep himself to the dragondeck or his cabin, containing any impulse to interfere.

“They have matters well in hand, I assure you,” he said to Mrs. Pemberton that afternoon, remarks addressed half to himself, and regarded his cold dinner without enthusiasm by the dimmed light which filtered in through the windows: it was deeply foreign to sit to his meat while the ship’s existence rose and fell without him.

But the storm did not run three days: it lingered for five, following them across the ocean as if by malice, without a single break in the weather long enough to sleep, and with a great many long enough to give them false hope that here, at last, had come an end. As the thicker darkness came to mark the night of the fourth day, and a fresh icy howling of wind swept over them from the south, Laurence went to Riley, who stood haggard and bloodshot by the wheel, and shouted in his ear, “Tom, do you let me send Lord Purbeck to sleep, and I will second you; when he is rested he may spell you in turn.”

Riley nodded after a moment, dully; when Laurence went to him, Purbeck did not say a word to argue but only stumbled away half-asleep already. Laurence did not know the men very well: there was more separation than one might imagine possible aboard a single vessel between the aviators and the sailors, none of whom liked very well to share their ship with dragons. But he knew the Allegiance well enough by now to direct them, and pantomime served better than shouts, with the wind yelling in all their ears at once.

“Surely it must almost be over, now,” Temeraire said, when Laurence came to speak to him briefly: the rain had lightened for a short while. “We might be let up, and stay aloft until the last of it has blown itself out—”

But he spoke low and hopelessly, enervated with fatigue and cold, and his eyes lidded down to slits; when Laurence said, “Not yet, my dear; pray have patience,” Temeraire subsided without further complaint and ate the raw sheep, which was put into his gullet by hand: the galley fires were still out, for safety.

Iskierka, sheltered from the worst of the weather, was in high temper at the length of their confinement, and more difficult to restrain; if Kulingile and Temeraire had not effectively formed part of her prison by the weight of their bodies, anchoring the restraints, Laurence did not doubt she would have flung off the chains and likely cast the entire ship ahoo despite all Granby could do to persuade her to calm.

“Oh! Not yet? It will never end, and I will not stay here, I will not,” she said, furiously, and began to try and throw herself back against the tarpaulin.

“Why are you making such a fuss?” Kulingile said drowsily, and Laurence saw Demane say something in his dragon’s ear; Kulingile yawned, and then heaved his head and one massive foreleg over Iskierka’s shoulders and sighed out, pinning her to the deck with his weight.

Iskierka whipped her head around and snapped at his nose, hissing, but there was no satisfaction to be had: Kulingile was already gone back to sleep, his tongue licking the fresh sheep’s blood from his muzzle in small darting unconscious strokes. “I will not,” she repeated, angrily, but ceased to fight the chains; instead she flung herself flat upon the deck and glared fury at the clouds.

But by the next morning, even her spirits had been defeated by the ceaseless storm. She only gummed at the goat that was offered her, and left half of it in the tub; Temeraire ate nothing at all, and barely opened his eyes to acknowledge when Laurence came to speak to him. “They can’t go on like this,” Granby said to Laurence, meeting him below: Purbeck had slept a little, and was gone on deck again. “Perhaps we had better let them aloft for the rest? It can’t keep storming forever, I suppose.”

He did not sound very convinced, and indeed in the moment it seemed entirely believable that the storm would continue without end, that they sailed under judgment and deluge.

“I would not give anything for the chances of their keeping in company aloft in this cover, and we cannot arrange any sort of rendezvous; we have not the least notion where we are, nor will until we see the stars again,” Laurence said.

“Then maybe Riley would let us put up a fire, and give them something hot to eat, if we were careful about it,” Granby said. “It is bad when they are refusing their meat, Laurence; in cold like this, they ought to be eating more than their usual, even if they are not flying.”

Laurence could not regard this suggestion with anything but dismay, but Gong Su, putting his head in—the aviators would never learn the polite fiction of failing to hear what was said on the other side of a bulkhead, aboard ship—made the suggestion that coals laid in the bottom of one of his great cauldrons would do to make some sort of hot soup, without the risk of open flame.

But Riley was asleep, and Purbeck would not countenance anything of the sort. “You might as well set the ship on fire to begin with,” he said flatly, without even the little courtesy he ordinarily offered Laurence, “and save us wondering how long it will take; and you damned well shan’t unchain them, either: we would be brought by the lee in moments if they went jumping around the deck. They must wait like all of us.”

“If I were sure Iskierka would wait, I shouldn’t ask,” Granby said, with some heat.

“If she is run so mad she would sink us only to have a chance of drowning herself, you may say so, and I will run one of the bow-chasers up to her and we will put a ball in her head before she sends us to the bottom,” Purbeck returned coldly; Laurence had to seize Granby’s arm and draw him away.

Even when Riley returned to the deck, however, he was little more favorable to the notion. “I cannot see taking such a risk, in the least,” he said, “and I wonder at your asking,” he added, even his more generous temper worn away with weariness and the endless grating struggle to keep the ship afloat.

“I am tempted to tell Gong Su to go forward,” Granby said angrily, as Laurence towed him back to the dragondeck, “and be damned to them all, talking as though we were asking for our own pleasure. The ship is meant for carrying dragons about to begin with; what else are they here for? Put a ball in her head, indeed; I would shoot him, first.”

He did not even try to speak quietly, and besides the storm had altered their sense of volume, like deaf men raising their voices to compensate for their own lack; his words fell into another brief lull in the roaring tempest, to be carried precisely where they had no business to go. Riley stiffened; Purbeck looked disdainfully; and where the continuing storm might have shortly erased the memory under the pressure of necessity, in that moment abruptly the clouds broke, and the first sunlight in five days spilled down upon the deck.