Crucible of Gold

Hammond might well express such anxiety, Laurence thought grimly: he could hardly name anything he would less desire than to hand a man over into bondage: whether owned by another man or a dragon scarcely made any difference. The great distance between Taruca’s home—whence he had surely been taken unwillingly— and his present abode was now explained, and his resignation at the fresh abduction. A man once snatched into slavery might be indifferent to a change of master, and would scarcely see any reason to believe that any honest or merciful act should be the design of his new captors.

“Pray inquire of the gentleman,” Laurence said, cutting Hammond’s continuing murmur short, “why he was taken from his home: had he committed a crime?”

“I must remind you, Captain, that we cannot intrude our own judgment upon their practice in such matters —” Hammond halted, seeing Laurence’s face, and turned to speak to Taruca, whose indignation when he had made out the line of Hammond’s inquiry required no translation.

“What reason but that I had strayed too far, walking, from the protection of my own ayllu, and might be seized without retribution: indeed, why would anyone have wanted to, if I were a criminal and a thief?” Taruca said, and hesitated; then drew himself up proudly and added, “If more reason were needed, I am of the khipukamayuq, and have fathered three sons and seven daughters yet alive when last I saw them: and beside that I am marked, of course, which you do not need me to say.”

Finishing this speech, his shoulders bowed as he said almost privately to himself, “Of course you do not mean to take me back,” with a faded resignation. Laurence would have liked to reassure him more decidedly than he could, in the present circumstance.

Meanwhile the listening governor bent down and peered at Taruca with one slitted red eye. “Is he marked?” He lifted his head away again and shook it, setting the rings of his peculiar accoutrement jingling, and said to Temeraire. “So he has survived the pox? The matter grows even worse. You are sea-people: you have no khipu yourself for him to work with, and no other tasks suitable for a man of his years: what would you even do with him? And from what you say, you did not even offer a proper challenge.”

“But we could not have made a challenge, even if we had wanted to,” Temeraire said, “as I have explained Iskierka did not mark where Taruca was taken from very well: she did not know he was blind, and would not be able to tell us the way back. Anyway, we mean to take him back to his children, not to keep him to do work for us: and I think it is very unkind that he should have been taken away from them. If you mean to reproach us for taking him from his owner, that is scarcely worse than taking him from his family—”

Even before Temeraire had translated his own speech, Laurence had gathered its direction by the increasingly broad gestures of protest Hammond made, trying to catch his attention; at last Laurence laid a hand on Temeraire’s side to interrupt him, and received an account of the conversation.

“You cannot so address the representative of a nation!” Hammond said, sharply. “Sir,” he said, turning his head up towards the governor and shouting, “sir, I must inform you that this in no way represents the position of His Majesty—”

Governor Hualpa, who so far had taken no particular notice of the human members of their party, lowered his head to put that enormous red eye on Hammond, whose speech faltered a little, meeting it. “Why are you shouting at me?” Hualpa said. “The governor of men will not receive you, because your country-men have proven they are not to be trusted, and you would very likely try to take him prisoner for gold; you have no-one else to blame for that but yourselves. Are you trying to say that this dragon has no standing to speak for your party?”

This inquiry left Hammond agape and plainly reluctant to effectually supplant himself with Temeraire, as representative of their party. Yet if there were to be any hope of persuading the governor to permit Taruca to go free, without provoking grievous incident, some avenue of communication at least was necessary to them; Laurence took Hammond by the arm.

“You have yourself expressed confusion as to the means the French had found to open negotiations,” Laurence said to him. “If the Inca will receive a dragon as ambassador, when they will not any man, the mystery is explained: you must not disavow Temeraire’s authority, if you desire any chance of forming relations with them ourselves.”

“Yes—yes, of course,” Hammond said, reluctantly dragging, and at last conveyed the same to Hualpa, not without doing his best to extract from Laurence a commitment to make Temeraire say only what Hammond first approved.

“You know my own sentiments on this matter,” Laurence said, while Hammond spoke to Hualpa, “and I am sorry—very sorry indeed—to learn that slavery is practiced here; but in justice to Hammond, we cannot hope to effect any change in their society, if we begin with antagonism; and indeed we are in poor circumstances to do so when our own nation can be reproached with its own share of barbarism in this regard.”

“Well, of course I will be polite,” Temeraire answered him, “but I must say it is rather much to be called thieves, only because we do not go about keeping slaves, and chaining them up, and selling them away from their families. It seems to me that it is only a compliment to them that I believed they were not slavers, either, and not an insult—”

“Not an insult!” another voice said, behind them, when Temeraire had turned to mention this to Hualpa; Temeraire looked over his shoulder to see that another dragon had come pacing into the hall: only a little larger than Palta had been, and in plumage entirely of green, “not an insult, when you talk as though I had treated him like a llama—chaining! selling! oh!”

The newcomer, a dragon called Cuarla, having bobbed his head to Governor Hualpa, proceeded to identify himself as Taruca’s injured owner. “And it is not to be borne,” he added, “that this burned dragon should be allowed to take him away: I am sure he would chain him up.”

“I would not chain anyone!” Temeraire said, “and I did not take him, anyway: Iskierka did.”

“What are you saying about me?” Iskierka demanded, rousing from her rapt contemplation of the wall; she had grown weary of the conversation, which she could not understand, and wandered off across the floor to go stare upon the panels. Several of the sailors were creeping along on her flanks and trying to use her to hide their attempts to break off small pieces; Ferris had every few minutes to go and chivvy several of them back into place.

“Nothing that is not the truth,” Temeraire said, “so you may lump it; you did take Taruca, and this dragon is here to complain of you and make trouble for all of us because you did.”

Iskierka looked Cuarla up and down and snorted comprehensively. “That little creature may complain of me all day if he likes; what does he mean to do about it?”

“Good God,” Hammond said. “Temeraire, do not—”

“Of course I will not translate that,” Temeraire said, with a flip of his ruff; he was not stupid, although he had to admit that Iskierka’s remark, however unkind, was rather to the point. The snort, however, did not require any translation: even without an intelligible word said to him, Cuarla puffed all his scales out so as to make himself nearly twice his size—which still left him somewhat less than a quarter of Iskierka’s.

“I will not have it,” he said furiously, “I will not! I demand a challenge, if she will not give him back; and apologize; and give me one of her men, too; she ought not have so many if it only makes her greedy for more.” And he glared at Iskierka with slitted fury.

Temeraire regarded him in some perplexity: surely he could not be a sensible creature. “He wants to fight you,” Temeraire said, to Iskierka’s demands for more translation. “No, I am not mistaken; and no, he does not think it is some other dragon he must fight; you can see perfectly well he is staring right at you, even if you do not know his language.”

“Perhaps,” Hammond said anxiously, “perhaps we might reconsider—Captain Laurence, it seems to me—the dragon seems very attached, and not at all likely to have mistreated—”

Overhearing, Iskierka swung her head around, outraged. “I am not going to lose to him.”

“It can scarcely forward our cause for you to maim or perhaps even kill a native beast, after you have already begun by stealing one of his—” Hammond paused, and groped around for a word which should sound nicer than slave, Temeraire supposed.

“Enough,” Laurence said, finally, while Granby spoke urgently to Iskierka, who huffed a little steam but subsided. “Temeraire,” Laurence said, “pray convey to these—gentlemen—that we cannot see our way clear to